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Tetragrammaton - Point of Convergence

Point of Convergence by Tetragrammaton

4...according to our on Wed 01 Dec, 2010.

Right. Time for my regular dose of wild discordance & tripped-out meandering noise, courtesy of the ever experimentally-minded Utech. The first track here begins gently, tentatively comprised of stormy percussive rolls & chinks of chimes. Further along, some eerie clattering sends ominous echoes across the void. Gradually, across the quarter hour duration, a hellish, dense tapestry of aural chaos is woven with thickly applied sheets of rabid noise & lascivious free-jazz abandon.  Disorientation is the key here and I can see how easy it is to get utterly lost in the resulting madness. The subsequent track is quite beautiful by contrast, containing gorgeous spooky chimes, bells & xylophone notes that result in a sublime aura of twinkly magic, punctuated by strange intermittent wooden thunking percussion & other occasional alien sounds. Then there's a disembodied doomy psychedelic scrawl creeping into your mind like a blackened lagoon-dwelling beast on the rampage. Imagine Skullflower in a murky swamp you may be somewhere close. A slice of dark, shimmering drone follows. The odd blunted scraping & clattering sounds beneath are quite unsettling, as is the periodic fluctuation in pitch that renders the thing worthy of a modern horror soundtrack. There's a track of mad proper improv pissing around that sounds great but apart from the violent tinnitus inducing violin isn't doing anything particularly new for me (nothing the Termite Club won't have hosted in Leeds at some point) and the last track is a surprise because I went to make a cup of tea and thought it had finished. Some interesting stuff here for defs.... In the usual sumptuous package.

Trapped on an ocean of disparate languages, sound gravitates towards meaning, escaping the obsolescence of mother tongues by denying the slow decay of time. In the biblical tale of the Tower of Babel, God punishes the tower builders by scattering them across the earth, unintelligible to each other. As they departed their blissful prison of same-think, they became drunk with new songs, washing down their newfound 'auditory cheesecake' with sectarian babble. In as much as their speech had been confounded, they were offered a musical re-enchantment through floating words, alveolar clicks and talking drums. By refusing the past, their music ceased to exist in time, choosing instead to create it. Employing hurdy-gurdy, crystal bowls, bells, voice, drums and waterphones, Tetragrammaton revisits the bedraggled unlanguage of the castoff nomad builders with quantum force. Climbing into gilded time capsules, the three members soon reappear uttering unknown tongues and blowing ancient horns, drenched in the embryonic saliva of Thoth, that Egyptian God of knowing-it-all. Point of Convergence is arguably the group's finest outing yet, capturing stripped-down harmonic explorations, overdriven dronescapes, meditative underwater recordings and a judicious dose of blown-out psychedelia. Edition of 500.

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