B°tong – The Long Journey (CD Album – Reverse Alignment)
Genre/Influences: Experimental, soundscape.
Background/Info: Next to the “Monastic” album Chris Sigdell released another work on Reverse Alignment. “The Long Journey” has been composed in between 2012 and 2016 and is mainly inspired by an astral phenomenon.
Content: This work sounds pretty different than “Monastic”. It’s carried by a more experimental basis, which rapidly sounds like a sound collage featuring numerous noise sources and field recordings. It creates the vision of a sonic casserole from which buzzing sound waves are escaping. There’s a slow progression in the song structure resulting in monstrous sound treatments.
+ + + : There’s an important focus on sound and noise creation emerging from this soundscape. There’s a dark-ambient touch recovering the tracks, but it all has been made by truly experimental procedures and noise arrangements. It makes me think to sonic chemistry where the musician became a kind of scientist/experimentalist in search of sound sources to transform them into something new. I also like the fact this album is not a copy-paste of “Monastic”, but definitely something different and more extreme.
– – – : The main difficulty with this kind of work is the accessibility. “The Long Journey”’ is a work for lovers of experimental music so it’s for sure make to seduce a very restricted number of fans.
Conclusion: B°tong sounds complex, and there is some magic emerging from this artist’s work in the way he manipulate and re-create sounds and noises.
Best songs: “2004 MN4 (Impact Risk- 1-300)”
Rate: (7).
Artist: www.btongmusic.com / www.facebook.com/btongmusic
Label: www.facebook.com/reversealignment
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