Nocturnal Emissions
Glossalalia
Track listing
Slowly pulsating drones, chirping electronics, distant radio static. Ambient or minimal? To answer the question, it might help to go back a couple of millennia to the Epicurians. Today their name mostly evokes indulgence in fleshly pleasures but that only one form of their thinking; the other sought to deny the body excess experiences. Though the difference isn’t always audible, ambient tries to envelop a listener in pleasant fluffiness while minimalism wants to remove any nonessentials to focus more intensely on the sound. My digression explains why Glossalalia can be an involving album, even on repeated hearings. At first, it seems just to flow with no real point, but soon the music racks into focus, much as long-distance runners claim to break through to a type of euphoria. Musical materials this austere, even delicate, can’t be handled abruptly; the long stretches of time are necessary to bring out their unique nature. Glossalalia may not demand too much of your attention but if you listen closely, the experience could be rewarding.
Lang Thompson
Option magazine
Like most bands from the industrial era, Nocturnal Emissions is how the working name for a soloist. Nigel Ayers makes a very different music now to the once gut-wrenching onslaughts of their early albums, with a music that is created for atmosphere, created using sampling and studio technology, or as the cover says "Disarranged and Decomposed", making a strange sonic experience with all manner of twisted and mutilated sounds. Just the right number of sonic extremes and surprising twists make it most engaging, and all-told quite original.
Alan Freeman
Audion 28