Labradford

Picture a desolate landscape, inhabited by ghosts wandering in destitution. Picture yourself surrounded only by ash and metal, soulless fragments of some distant explosion, but above all, forget color altogether and think in black and white, the ideal contrast for depicting alienation. Well, now you have before you the image of what this album represents in musical form.

Labradford, like all artists of great stature, have metabolized genres that seem mutually antithetical — in this case psychedelia, industrial music and ambient — through the mood of their own era, arriving at something new and unexpected. The industrial sounds of the historic late-70s English school, cacophonous and hammering, here implode inexorably, drained of their impact, collapsing into a distant, indefinable noise. The mechanical rhythm disappears, dying off in the form of faint, muffled metallic murmurs. From this point of view, Labradford capture our era to perfection. No longer an enemy to fight, a reference point, a line of conduct that, however extreme, represented a "break" "against" something, a revolt "toward" a goal. No — those reference points have now been irrevocably lost, and that movement today is utterly out of time.

The new wave of Throbbing Gristle or Cabaret Voltaire was alarmed by the advent of industrial civilization and voiced its revolt by pushing that unease to extremes, "translating it" into music through an exhausting numbness, provoking irritation and disquiet. Today we've grown "inured" to all of that, but above all we've "moved past" all of it. The industry of smokestacks and mechanical monsters has morphed into near-invisible microchips, and is all the more dangerous for being subliminal — exactly like Labradford's music, which is industrial without sounding like it at all: label-obsessed critics would file it under "post-industrial".

The ambient elements found on the record serve precisely to anesthetize the listener, ambient being the subconscious genre par excellence, born not to be listened to but to be "absorbed". Psychedelia, by contrast, is a minor element, though no less important for its hallucinogenic quality. The intent, moreover, is already declared by the beautiful cover art, where those metal pillars — perhaps a conveyor belt — appear blurred, like the oneiric image of a distant memory on the verge of vanishing to make way for wakefulness.

And indeed it's anemic steel noises that open the record, introducing "Phantom Channel Crossing". Pebbles and chains dragging slowly as if carried by a cosmic wind, emitted by a murky analogue electronics. Sinister creaking of sheet metal echoes in the air, creating a nerve-wracking atmosphere, as if awaiting an imminent tragedy — an ideal soundtrack for a concentration camp.

"Midrange", on the other hand, unfolds over decidedly more conventional harmonic territory, but above all makes room for melody and singing, wholly absent from the preceding nightmare. The track opens with liquid guitar chimes of clear psychedelic lineage, over which, after a few seconds, a languid violin stretches out, its voice recalling the "lead vocal" role of Dirty Three. Then the voice appears, heavily effected and very warm, declaiming as if gripped by a latent anxiety, while in the background, amid a thousand scattered noises, a solemn organ rises.

The sense of pain and desolation this track conveys reaches almost religious heights on the following "Pico". A bass that sounds like the tick of a pendulum clock preludes the entrance of a psalm-like organ theme, and above all a voice that seems to recite a prayer, as if pronouncing the eternal rest of a lost civilization. Keeping time (and perhaps also the very "sense" of time) are the usual clock ticks, metronomic and unperturbed. This is perhaps the record's most moving moment, and certainly the one that best embodies its spirit.

"The Cipher" is another deeply harrowing nightmare of psychological devastation, amid intergalactic hisses and synthetic palpitations — yet another expression of latent terror, a three-minute instrumental where melody again disappears, giving way to the usual aseptic, sickly atmosphere. The long procession of "Lake Speed" again relies on the organ to convey a sense of martyrdom, accompanied by an intermittent dissonance that blurs the sonic planes and leaves the listener dazed. Slowing everything down are a listless guitar and an apathetic bass, together marking the pace of this deformed march that by now has little left of the human about it.

Dissonance is the true protagonist of the following "Scenic Recovery". The aim remains the same: to stun. But not through the noise and rhythm of the "old school" — rather through a slow, anguished sonic delirium that, in this case, leads to an almost hypnotic state, thanks to the beguiling coils of the violin and the relentless beat of a drum machine smeared with a "lo-fi" effect.

By the time we reach the closing "Battered", we're drained yet terribly captivated by the journey, just in time to appreciate yet another masterpiece, a fitting final testament to an unrepeatable album.

At this point everything seems to fade even further, wrapped in a thick fog, as if delivering the record to the most remote corner of our mind, where our most latent experiences reside. A tremulous guitar invades our perception with its shapeless sound, the same purpose followed by the keyboard, which insinuates itself so delicately we barely notice its arrival. A quartz clock makes its presence felt now and then, while the voice drowns and dissolves, by now liquefied, in this boundless play of fades. Suddenly everything stops, making way for a languid guitar-bass-drums interplay of clear post-rock inspiration, which accompanies the listener to the record's end.

A record whose worth, like that of all relatively recent albums, has perhaps not yet been fully settled. Regardless of any historical-sociological discussion, though, our ears made their verdict known long ago. A timeless verdict.

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01/11/2006