Hi everyone, this is the last part of my Crónica review series (for now). Today I’m putting the focus on this 2008 album by Pure called Ification. The album is again presented in the same 16-bit/44.1kHz sound quality as the physical CD release and includes the album cover in good resolution and PDF file with album details and credits of course.
Ification is a much shorter album than the previous releases I reviewed, although its 58 minutes running time is still longer than average and I definitely had a good listening experience with this album. Over the 7 album tracks Pure’s music crosses various genres like Noise, Dark Ambient and electro-acoustic music. It’s definitely an interesting mixture of sonic textures and rhythms on this album but there’s also a good cohesion in the music as there’s a recurring theme of manipulated acoustic or electric instruments that binds all tracks together into a whole. First track Fire is a curious one, chopped up blocks of guitar Noise chords in an unpredictable rhythm. It’s pretty barebones, minimal and short but still a fun piece to start with. Second track After the Bomb dives into much more atmospheric territory with reversed pads that sound like run through an MP3 compression filter. The piece slowly builds as a drone, high frequency blips fade in and soft sirens can be heard. Then ringmodulated manipulated drums come in, playing in an improvised way. Amongst these are also bursts of Noise, not very harsh but definitely noticable elements of crackling texture. It definitely feels like a situation of uncertainty, if we take the track title After the Bomb, less like terror after a bomb would go off but more like this feeling of uncertainty. An intriguing piece that flows very smoothly in this unique mixture of sounds. Approximation follows, a piece that does sound a bit like a Contemporary Classical composition with the low horns and high glassyy string like sounds. A pretty mysterious droning piece that varies constantly between two or three chords, there’s some dark percussion in here as well. It definitely gives off a tense feel but also shows a bit of the low point I found about some tracks on this album. This low point is the sometimes slightly confusing structure of the tracks, so in the case of Approximation the way the music progresses feels a bit vague to me at some points. The low horns, high string sounds that are sometimes in upwards and downwards waves in frequency are combined and follow eachother but don’t feel entirely connected in what sounds they make. Fortunately though this confusion is reduced by the abstraction inherent in the music, so while I couldn’t follow where the music was going in some of the tracks, the atmosphere and vibe the textures give off is still inspiring and captivating to get into. Blind Flight is a darker piece that besides drone also features quite a lot more Noise. The piece is more continous going from a hollow metallic drone to crunchy whining Noise with Industrial overtones. The piece then moves towards tense string ambience in which the Noise fades back in, crackling even more, buzzing like a big Industrial turbine hall towards a metallic ending. Sonomatopeia features vocals by Alexandra von Bolzn and features a lot excellent synth and Noise experimentation in a frightening high frequency drench cloud of sound. The piece moves from glassy and buzzing to diffuse Noise into sharp synth drone ending with heavily distorted and flanged Noise. The vocals are mostly textural experiments Alexandra does with her mouth, in the end culminating in some distorted wordless screams. It’s not the most extreme kind of vocals I’ve heard but they definitely do add a nice organic, alien kind of texture and tension to the music, nice. Next track End, is a long Drone piece that has this lovely diffuse resonating and ticking beginning that’s very deep and moves into a distorted and buzzing drone. The buzzing is nicely low and intense on the ears. Cool thing is that this drone actually shifts to a different tone not too long before half-way into the piece, only establishing the pitch of the piece after some time. This sharp drone then gets accompanied by washy distant percussion and metal resonance. The drone sometimes goes gets filtered with a Low Pass Filter of its high frequencies to focus more on the background and then goes back into sharpness again. Again very mysterious and dark music that develops gradually but also really keeps a great deep distant spacial soundscape going. And that is also what I like about a lot of the music on this album too, the space caused by the reverb on the piece gives the music a more distant and deep sound that can still be equally harsh but also gives more of a feeling of a huge or infitely big space these sounds move in. Iron Sky is the final piece and it’s the noisiest one. Kicking off with a section of excellent rhythmic noise choppy rhythms made up of distorted noise and heavily distorted acoustic drums the piece gets into harsh screeching Noise mayhem full of high frequency crunch, punchy drums with quite some bass in the kick. The last three minutes of the piece are particularly harsh and intense, an awesome chaos of Noise waves mixed with heavily modulated acoustic instruments. An explosive and fiery finale to the album.
Ification by Pure is an often dark album of electro-acoustic Drone and Noise infused music. It’s an experience that could perhaps use some more structure in the composition ocassionally but this is made up for with an excellent original sonic signature sound by Pure. An enjoyable and thrilling varied ride through dark sonics for anyone looking for experimental music with a deeper, darker and more live feel to it. Orlando Laman