earthly delights archive
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Nocturnal Emission On their new album Imaginary Time, Nocturnal Emissions’ Nigel Ayers "deconstructs and decomposes" a collage of sounds ranging from foreign voices to percussive thuds. Charlotte Bill offers melodic acoustic instrumentation, such as flute and piano, in some places which nicely balance out with Ayers’ experimental musings. Ayers finds musical relationships between different elements by focussing on sonority and texture rather than just their inherent (or lack of inherent) melodic possibilities. Night Sky is a suite which features some thudding percussion that maintains the trance-like effect of the electronic sounds while keeping it from becoming lulling. The title track focuses on thudding, wood-like percussives which form the base of the piece, while reiterated voice fragments sporadically intrude. While near the end of side two the ideas start becoming a bit repetitive, there is a lot of valuable material here to absorb and think about. Bryan Reesmann |