Steven Hess & Christopher McFall, "The Inescapable Fox"

This collaboration between Locrian's Steven Hess and composer/field recordist Christopher McFall is sound art at its most desolate and decayed.  It's a strangely subdued and subtle album, with long non-musical stretches and very rare melodic interludes.  That doesn't make for the most immediately gratifying listen, but it is most definitely by design.  In its own way, this is blacker and more misanthropic than black metal, evoking the ruined and smoldering aftermath rather than the fury.

Under The Spire

According to Greek mythology, King Minos was once the victim of a curse that caused him to ejaculate spiders, scorpions, and millipedes, which was exceedingly unpleasant for both him and his romantic interests.  Eventually, he found someone (Procris of Athens) that was able to cure him of his embarrassing affliction and was so grateful that he gave her Laelaps, a hound that never failed to catch his prey.  Curiously, however, Laelaps had a rival: the Teumessian fox, which could never be caught.  Zeus found the whole thing very tedious and turned them both to stone, but Hess and McFall feel differently: that paradox is the central metaphor for The Inescapable Fox, which attempts to create a similar struggle between light and dark.  I think darkness wins pretty decisively here, but the rare glimpses of light are enjoyable and unpredictable enough to keep things interesting.

The bulk of these five untitled pieces is comprised of field recordings, which gives the album an enigmatic and surreal narrative arc of sorts (or at least the illusion of one).  Medium also plays a very important role here, as both McFall and Hess are enthusiastic proponents of analog/tape recording.  In fact, this collaboration actually took shape in very archaic fashion, as the two musicians traded tapes through the mail.  The choice of media had an even deeper impact than that, however, as McFall often ravages his tapes with hydrolysis before recording, which is largely responsible for the murky and blackened atmosphere here.  Nothing sounds natural or completely recognizable–everything seems ruined, slowed down, or reversed in some way.  The Inescapable Fox is a slow and lonely drift though ominous drones and throbs, humming and roaring machinery, tape hiss, and sinisterly re-purposed animals and dripping water.  It makes for an unsettling and disorientingly amorphous listening experience.

Still, while I wholeheartedly admire the process, guts, and vision that went into this album, I think it leans a bit too heavily on being sparse and shadowy: a bit more actual "music" or structure would make it significantly more compelling.  That doesn't seem to be an artistic failing though, as McFall's very effective and perfectly placed blossoms of twinkling piano indicate that the duo were in complete control of what they were doing at all times.  I suspect that they deliberately avoided anything at all that would lump this album in with contemporary ambient or drone and–if that was the case–I'd say they succeeded admirably.  I am probably not ready to fully embrace sound art this spare, abstract, and ravaged yet, but I may very well catch up someday.

Samples:

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three