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The Black Hands, "The Perfect Beauty of Venus"
Alex Neilson (Directing Hand, Taurpis Tula, the One Ensemble of Daniel Padden) and Frank Janiurek’s new project magnificently combines acoustic experiments, digital breakdowns, slow drone and vocal melody. This 3" CDR’s single 22 minute long track further reinforces the idea of free percussive playing as a thing of beauty, not of noise.
From a steady rhythmic bum Casio organ note, which might just even be the tight circling of reverberating tones, the song begins. The slowly layering tones regularly break cover to reveal a digital starlight twinkle. The hilltop woodwind, scoured cymbal and drained/bleached feedback rise as if lit by the slow slide of slinking daylight. Many times on The Perfect Beauty of Venus the music takes deep dips into descending noisy slides but always seems to settle on a rhythm or melody. Instead of creating a straightforward common montage of sounds, the sounds here have a life of their own; the music is organic and evolving as it progresses. Instead of a linear movement of layering sound after sound, the music seems to spin and consume itself, revolving spirograph style as opposed to horizontally.
Conventional melodies are found in the higher / lower vocal parts which wordlessly talk about melancholy through, what are perhaps, lost-and-found traditional tunes. Even when a passage of (probably percussion sourced) digitally messed-with vinyl scratch sounds takes centre stage and tumbles down into straighter high speed crackling noise, the vocal remains as desolately dominant. But better, stronger and more emotive stirrings are sourced straight from the dipped tab hits of high percussive sounds dancing over the music. Proof, if still needed, that the drum has a stronger emotive pulse than merely playing the part of the time-honoured rock band’s heartbeat. The confluence of these gorgeous stretches of percussion and smooth thousand sided tones is what makes this release such a beautiful beginning to The Black Hands.
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