Ran Slavin, ‘Film Maker / Artist / Director-Writer / Sound Producer’, rhymes with Dan Flavin, the late American neon minimalist, but there the similarities end, at least as concerns his latest album, the free-to-download The Mediterranean Drift on the criminally underrated Cronica label. Based partly around the threat and turmoil of the present day middle east, as documented by Claude-Joseph Vernet in his 1772 painting ‘The Shipwreck’, the Tel Aviv-based artist explores a suitably murky, sub-aqueous sound world, like Tim Hecker with bubbles.
The opening half, dominated by the 15 minute opening track ‘Losing Coordinates in the Mediterranean Drift’, centres around warm flickering tones and circling granular loops, doused in hiss and crackle and reminiscent of Philip Jeck. This section functions as an ‘establishing shot’ for the darker, more evocative second half. ‘Financial Warfare and Psychological Sedatives’ is immediately more striking, drawn in dub-charcoal and marked by submarine pulses and streaming ticker-tape, depicting the stock market plummeting into the sea. ‘Chemical Canaries and Car Alarms’ is more abrupt, and as close to Noise as Slavin gets, all industrial machine beats and toxic din, while the closing ‘Every road leads to the BAD ROAD’ crumbles glistening synth pads into shattered ruins, sleigh bells floating over acrid smoke. Here Slavin creates an inspired synthesis of beauty and ugliness, birth and decay, and a fitting conclusion to such a powerful album. Joshua Meggitt
via Cyclic Defrost