Reviews
VITAL WEEKLY 513|Frans
De Waard
It's been a while since we last from
Dual, aka Colin Bradley (no relationship
to Paul Bradley, but former member of Splintered), who has been playing
ambient music on guitars since 1993, and has a whole bunch of releases
available. Ambient music is not exactly the correct tag for the music
of Dual, as there is a sense of rhythm present in
most of these tracks, which is also an unusual feature in the releases
on Mystery Sea. These rhythms are minimalist pulsating matters, and
could not be seen as anything to dance to. It's almost like an industrial
rhythm or a metronome, but it's a more complex than that. On top,
Bradley waves together finely knitted patterns on
his guitar and multiple guitar effects. Of course the six tracks on
this release are long, but Dual takes the right amount
of time to say what he needs to say. It's music that needs to develop
over a longer period of time to do what it has to do. It's at times
a bit Rapoon like (at least on this new release) and after the latest
bunch of releases with where more or less synomous, Mystery Sea has
found something that expands the view of the label yet still fits
the context of the label. One of the more surprising releases on the
label.
vital weekly
TOKAFI
|Tobias
Fischer
Many drone artists feel kind of uncomfortable being
shifted off into the Ambient corner. Not so Colin Bradley,
who either as a soloist or in collaboration with various colleagues
makes up Dual. Which has less to do with an imaginary
allegiance with atmospheric sounds designed to pleasantly fill your
room, but more with his vision of Ambient, which bypasses textbooks
and substitues their definition with a music of open aims intended
to make listeners think about the interaction between composition
and spacial factors, to allow the mind to drift without loosing cerebral
contact completely and to construct flowing textures made up of different
colours and temperatures. All of these aspects are present on “tocsin”
to varying degrees, but the most surprising quality of this album
has got to be located somewhere else: It has an almost confrontational
character.This doesn’t sound all
that spectacular in the first place. After all, many Dark Ambient
releases also convey a cold and eerie feeling of constant suspense
and asthmatic tension. And yet, Bradley is not out
to merely spook his audience or to keep them gasping for air during
an ill-tempered baptism – no, he really wants to jump into their
face, make them fully experience the alien nature of his drastic sounds
and to rub the razor-blade leaves of his rampant mind plants over
innocent tongues and ears. You have to listen to “tocsin”
loud or else its impact will be lost on you, but if you do, you’re
in for a remarkable ride, akin to the ones you had as a child in a
tunnel of horror. Divided into six parts, this voyage takes fifty
minutes, which fly by like the meandering hallucinations of a feverish
nightmare on acid. Already in Part 1, heavy sheets of abrasive noise
phase in and out like laser photons in slow motion or a children’s
choir caught inside a black hole, ending either in a sustained scream
or a fulminant feedback frolic, while stoic drums poundings and a
irredescent blip convey the feeling of a cosmic jam session. Then
the aural equivalent of a TV test pattern in High Definition sucks
you in, while a mutilated bass drum stumbles in spasms across the
energy fields of a pitch black canyon – a picture of madening
intensity. And in the final chapter, Bradley dives
headlong into an ecstatic frenzy dominated by tortured screams, moaning
metal, interleaving layers of irregularly breathing voices and a pattern
of buzzing and clicking dots. Amidst it all, there is plenty of room
for beauty – especially the shorter pieces, with its silent
pads and otherwordly rhytms, its industrial midnight jazz-dub fantasies
and especially their rapidly changing moods bring out the feminin
side of this singular world.The latter can
not be stressed enough, for even though the wonderful voyages of many
drone artists gain their power exactly from penetrating the same nerve
in endless cycle, it is refreshing to hear an album which is capable
of both moving you and shaking you up. And there is more: Everything
around you looks different when seen through the lense of “tocsin”
and in this respect it is Ambient in the most direct way. Turning
its volume down to the point that you won’t hear it anymore
(as Brian Eno suggested) can not be advised, though: You better know,
where the danger’s coming from.
tokafi
SOMEWHERECOLD
|Brent
Rated
: 5 stars out of 5
No super-glossy emo-faux goth photo spreads
of a band trying to look “edgy”, or “depressed”,
or “mysterious”. No whiny falsetto or minor-key guitar
parts to cause reviewers to gush that it’s “dark”.
No black lipstick imprints or bloody knives. No, Tocsin is the real
deal…the definition of the most harrowing, dark, seething music
one can come across. Created by UK ambient artist Dual (aka
Colin Bradley), Tocsin clutches at the last
remnants of industrial civilization metallic drones and morphs them
into a terrifying, breathing entity. While the theme of industrial
waste and cold machines are admittedly a divinized construction of
this listener’s imagination, one can’t help but wonder
that Dual’s music acts more as a foreboding caution with its
slow-moving rumbling sounds often resembling the approach of a distant
and violent storm (a “tocsin” is, after
all, another name for a warning signal or an alarm bell). Whatever
the specific intent of Bradley, the final result
in Tocsin is a mesmerizing unfolding of carefully
constructed sound that takes on a life of its own. Cursory listens
to Tocsin are simple not possible…from the
opening moments of “Tocsin I” in which swells of drones
overtake the listener, the music on the 6 track full-length CD is
instantly suffocating. It’s as if Dual conspires
to lure his listeners into a trap of hazy drones, sparse and heavily
processed electronics, and melody fragments, never releasing his hold
through the 50 minutes of music flowing from one track to another,
until the final strains of “Tocsin VI” fade from the listener’s
conscience. It is also often impossible to distinguish one track to
the next on Tocsin, as Dual seamlessly welds his
tracks together through tentative transitions. Distant rumbles sublimely
distend and recede throughout Tocsin, while
Dual periodically allows high-pitched squeals to pierce through
the mix. The hypnotic (though extremely subtle) repetitive samples,
along with the heavy low-end guitar drones, convey a the picture of
a fog-drenched nighttime Northern Sea coast, with iron-machine factories
spewing yellow smoke into the air and green waves ebbing on the shore.
Some tracks (“Tocsin III”, for instance) almost beg to
tell a story, as Bradley speeds up his transitions
and uses a variety of drones and sounds to convey a sense of restlessness
and movement in the piece. However the tracks differ, from the almost
melodic “Tocsin IV” to the disturbingly chilling “Tocsin
VI”, it’s clear that the CD is meant to be listened to
in one setting, most preferably with high quality headphones and zero
distraction. Dual fits in so many almost-there sounds
into the mix, while masterfully directing and guiding the overall
mood of the music that it takes multiple listens by wide eyed and
nervous listeners to begin to comprehend the majesty of the recordings.
(The overall mood of Tocsin
reminds the listener not coincidentally of the darkest and most seething
moments of Bark Psychosis’ Codename: Dustsucker, which shouldn’t
surprise any discriminating listener due to Dual’s
role as the co-architect on that disc. As a point of reference for
those familiar with the Bark Psychosis release: take “INQB8TR”’s
opening moments of hazy darkness, and elongate those sounds…allow
them to overpower the listener again and again…and you approach
the sonic explorations of Tocsin. Perhaps
this isn’t a conventional review, but in the end Tocsin
is not a conventional disc. Dual doesn’t try
to engage his listener with some myth of image. Rather, he relies
solely on his well-honed craft, and pulverizes his listener with incredibly
well-constructed multi-layered force of sound that is ultimately,
though terrifying and dark, transcendent and beautiful. Fans of dark
drone-ambient music (as well as pretenders who think they are listening
to truly dark and haunting music): meet your new master in
Dual.
somewherecold
TOUCHING
EXTREMES |Massimo
Ricci
I don't know the exact reason, but it looks to me
that British people working in the area of dark ambient own a couple
of additional gears compared to the ever-growing mass of "buy-me-a-synth-become-a-musician"
using the first Korg preset two octaves down to make sounds of "obscure
waters" and the second Roland preset to evoke "the sacred
ooooohs and aaaahs" while sitting on their sofa looking at the
sport results. This helps them (the British, I mean) in transforming
a "normal" album (and, let's face it, most of this stuff
sounds exactly the same whoever releases it) in something worthy of
being considerated more carefully. Such is the case of Dual
(Colin Bradley) who, in "Tocsin",
sails through the perilous waters of loopscaping and "eternal-torment"
droning without causing my yawns to suffocate me, even giving me some
very nice suggestions in various points of his disc. Bradley's
forte is his use of overwhelming low frequencies that strike like
an earthquake at unexpected moments; but he's also a good hand in
creating hazardous environments of elemental pseudo-tribalism, which
often flows into oppressive atmospheres that once we could have called
(still wondering why, by the way) "postindustrial", especially
when an essential pulse is brought forth in the mix. The recipe is
enriched by sparse and intelligently placed processed field recordings,
the overall result being very good for at least three quarters of
the disc, as Dual avoids remaining on a subject for
too long, immediately shifting his camera somewhere else. The final
movement is the most anguishing one, echoes of mutilated entities
seemingly accompanying with their lamentations a body in its predecease
process in what's a disquieting, effective final touch.
touching
extremes
CHAIN
D.L.K.|Eugenio Maggi --- NEW !
Rated :
4 stars out of 5
Mostly a solo expression
of UK soundmaker Colin Bradley (who used to play
with Splintered, for those who remember them), the Dual
project has been releasing records since 1993, and though I have only
listened to a handful of them, I think the main ingredients remain
the same: guitar-generated dronescapes that some years ago would have
been tagged as "isolationism". Bradley definitely
knows how to handle his tools, and the result is a fascinating journey
through underwater visions, in the purest Mystery Sea tradition (hell,
after 32 releases we can safely speak of a label identity, correct?).
What is great is Bradley's ability to vary the typical sustained drones
with almost percussive patterns, generally made of simple looped strummings;
not to mention the superb, ultra-bleak track which closes the album
dragging you right to the ocean bottom with a leaden hand. My favourite
disc out of the recent MS output.
chaindlk
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