Wilt - As Giants Watch Over Us
With As Giants Watch Over Us, his follow up to his musique concrete opus Radio 1940, James Keeler continues to refine his singular style that blends dark ambient atmospheres with apocalyptic rhythmic noise and the lost radio signals of cinematic isolationism. A fervent sound designer, Keeler makes music that evokes time and space, transcending the utilitarian method of setting mood music to sampled doom sayers in order to communicate his bleak vision. Instead, Keeler utilizes an amalgamation of modern compositional methods to create soundscapes that slip directly into your brain and detonate their message cross your sensory arrays.
"The Coming Plague" opens with the distorted hum of large insects as a swarm of genetically altered locust land and begin devouring every green leaf within a ten mile radius. Looped voices and simple tone melodies rise up around the locust noises as if civilization has been hurriedly abandoned in the face of the approaching swarm, leaving behind the automated machinery that will eventually grind to a rusty halt. The sounds of "Engineering Eternity" are of unsupervised machinery. Electrical current flows without purpose, sparking erratically from the heads of poorly shielded cooper conduits. Automated fabricators attach parts to a cybernetic construct without consideration of their programming, and the resultant cyborg bleeds steam and coughs white noise.
The machinery spins backwards on "Reversing Magnetism." The track begins as an ambient piece as if the world has been spun down and, in those few moments before it is started again, everything settles and all that remains is the breath of motion. And then, slowly, rhythmically, the world is spun up again, though in a reversed order. The inverted loops bleed over into "Tangled in Briars" where Keeler paints a stark portrait of panic and uncertainty.
"Wires for Nerves" bristles with a thousand lit nerve endings, each one sending back a crackling stream of electricity. The resultant music is an ambient, groaning melody that is suffused with electric fire. Your own pulse fuels the recursive ebb and flow of the noises and, as your heart rate begins to accelerate, the field of sound becomes denser and layered with more static. "The Fiddler and the Fool" performs a slow dance on cracked concrete as several violinists get caught in a film loop, endless cycled until their fingers bleed. Repetition can be creepy when it is a melody that seems like it is a bit of happiness plastered over a facade in order to hide the screaming terror beneath, and Keeler's loop of fading violins teeters on the edge of melancholy and despair.
Lest I paint a completely bleak picture, let me point out that "The Mystery of Iniquity" concerns itself with light. While an old Victrola spins endlessly, churning static into your speakers, there is a faint ray of sunlight that is still caught in the worn coils of your receiver and it bleeds out into the room in a thin tone. Keeler is creating an atmosphere of Armageddon, but he stops short of complete annihilation. There is, the ray says, still hope as long as there is light and long as there is air and water. While "The Disappearance of Man" whispers and creaks and whistles as if the wind is playing old instruments left behind by civilization, eventually a tiny radio signal bleeds into the mix. Somewhere out there someone is still transmitting.
Purely instrumental music is easily labeled as a "soundtrack to an imaginary film," and while Keeler's work could very readily be attached to an apocalyptic cinematic vision of a desolate future, his careful sculpting of the aural environments creates a listening experience that is more than just a thematic soundtrack; As Giants Watch Over Us is a symphonic air raid siren, a collection of songs that concerns themselves with the end of the world. Listen or ignore at your own risk.
Wilt
Ad Noiseam [2004]
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