On - Your Naked Ghost Comes Back at Night

7.5/10

On is a peculiar collaboration between Chicago-based percussionist and electronic artist Steven Hess and the French minimalist experimental composer Sylvain Chauveau. This collaboration's trademark is one that you won't encounter much: it defines the entire sound of the album without any interference of these two artists. The material is processed, or produced if you will, by a third party. The improvised recordings (done in the Acme Studio in Chicago in 2003) for this album where handed over to the Norwegian Helge Sten, who made this his last effort as the legendary Deathprod. Several years after the initial 2004 CD release on the French DSA label, this hailed material finally found its way to a proper vinyl release on Type Records.




It's needless to say that an album as critically-acclaimed as Your Naked Ghost Comes Back At Night belongs in the catalog of a label that holds more treasures of this kind. Released in their signature cardboard sleeve with only a few impressions of birds illuminating its cover, the album marks the milestone of the fiftieth release of this excellent UK label. But it takes more than audiophile nerd-talk and vinyl fetishism to acquire a score that denotes a "great release." On earns this easily with seven exercises of hypnotic drones and reverbed crackle.

The opening tracks ease the listener into the one hour death ambient listen with a mid-range focused piece where little spikes of crackle and consistent vibrant rumblings search their way over and through Deathprod's layers. Slowly transforming recordings form into a haunting choir of feedback, chanting over the omnipresent layers. As the album blooms towards the middle, the focus shifts to a deeper and more disturbing, yet minimal, dark ambient. On each listen I imagined myself being lowered in a well that becomes sealed, like some cruel medieval punishment. The banging hammers on the surface, sealing me in, swirl down the old stones and hit the water before I hear them as a rumble of gated reverb. The fourth track, "Oh Run Slowly", focuses on the higher end of the audible spectrum, as if it was the celebration to my new found home, ringing in an eternity of drone. Like a soundtrack to my sonic epiphany, it lightens the heavy mood that manifests more and more as the albums evolves.

The closing half of Your Naked Ghost Comes Back At Night delves into the more hypnotic flavor of drone induced by the little rhythm of Deathprod's effects over the broader, slowly oscillating backdrop. This is where the true aficionados of this experimental niche will prevail over the easy listening, esoteric crowd that gets off on the plethora of introspective-sounding ambient releases. The nuances in the music become more subtle and are mostly found in the minor differences invoked by disturbances (or tweaks) in the resonating sound waves as they flow through an almost constant aural space. These minor fluctuations in audible shape are allowed to bloom by the less attention-grabbing opening half of the album, offering lengthened drones that will keep the attentive listener on the edge of his seat with every recurring swell. The seventeen minute closing track is an ideal soundtrack (or tribute even?) for gazing at Mark Rothko's work (or any seemingly objectless art for that matter).

If you were to give this album a listen without knowing its background, I'm sure you'd find that there is something about this release that makes it stand out from its competition. MGR's hypnotic mantra-feeling, mixed with Einstuerzende Neubauten's experiments - and my own excursions - in the catacombs of bridges aren't comparisons I'll easily be making with one of the many laptop ambient fiddlers that crowd the depths of MySpace, yet Your Naked Ghost Comes Back at Night earns it. Considering that this album finally found a decent home at Type, and a release on the best medium for music that mankind knows, makes it all that more precious.


written for and published by The Silent Ballet
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