MUSIC REVIEW: BLANCK MASS - 'BLANCK MASS'

Ambient Electronica Echoing Nature on an Album that's Smart, Substantial & Experimental

By: Andrew Shaw

June 21, 2011

(Rock Action) Blanck Mass -- the album released on Mogwai's Rock Action label -- has been described as “...a collection of tracks loosely themed around cerebral hypoxia and the beautiful complexity of the natural world.” Blanck Mass the artist is Benjamin Power -- one-half of experimental, post-rock, drone-music aficionados Fuck Buttons. Carefully weighing all this information should conjure at least a fair expectation of what you're going to experience throughout the ten tracks. However, things like life and musical pedigrees are seldom so easily described. Put aside any preconceived ideas of what you are about to hear.

There is something extraordinarily painterly about this collection. On display is a wealth that's only ever afforded by minimalism. Imagine the layers of a Rothko canvas, initially simple and easy on the eye. The longer we spend in the company of the tunes, so layers, shifting light, and meanings are suggested, subtly switched, and toyed with. Simple beauty, which offers a kind of reassuring substance, soon becomes more challenging, insightful and, at times, disorientating. As modern instrumental pieces go, few are so magical in their inference of vision. This is as much a sonic meditation as it is a contemporary recording. It's deeply heartfelt but not sentimental. It's smart, but it's not all cerebral. Perhaps that's the point; when the brain is starved of oxygen, another part of the psyche or the 'soul' takes control. Surrender to something else happens. Blanck Mass, though, doesn't appear subjugated by or in reverence to any higher power beyond the natural world.

Sounds of nature run through these tunes like an underground river. Samples of organic stuff -- or seemingly organic stuff, like chirping insects and trickling water -- pass across the face electronica as if the two elements have lived together forever. Nothing jars, nothing appears forced. There are no uncomfortable coercions; everything appears to fall of its own accord into art. If nothing can convince of Benjamin Power's ability to portray space, time, and natural process, you need only sit with the first two tracks: “Sifted Gold” and “Sundowner.” Usually when something is called 'experimental,' a level of self-conscious obscurity gets poured into proceedings. What Power does is quite the opposite. These tracks, opening proceedings, are nothing but invitation and explanation of what kind of thing to expect if you stick around for the full trip. No one is excluded, all are welcome. This is the stuff that the artist wants to share, like a certain view from a cliff-top or a mountainside, or a forest. The view could be kept secret, esoteric, unusual, but what's the point of that? By finding mutual perspective of natural wonders, we're encouraged to share, treasure, and preserve.

Tempos are easy and unimposing. Drums are spared. You do get carried away, perhaps sometimes beyond a place where your feet can touch the floor, but it happens gradually, without your knowing, or minding. Even in the faster moments, nothing is fevered. Melodic shifts are the only method of tailing a beat. In that sense, this is an unfashionable album. (The kids love their beats.) In the best sense, Blanck Mass avoids trend, which means there's a genuinely timeless quality to the tracks. Tunes may end up remixed, sampled, and treated with beats later, but here they exist in a state of very nice nakedness.

A real presence across the entire collection is the atmosphere of space and movement. Bodies move through one another, fluids intermingle, gases rise and fall. We could be viewing aspects of the world through a digital microscope, or a distant galaxy through a radio telescope. Perspectives blur to reveal clearer patterns, regardless of measure. Listening through headphones lends a feeling of slow expansion between the ears.

With tracks titled “Land Disasters” and “Chernobyl,” things may be expected to be sudden, confrontational, disquieting. However, what Power does is pull back from human scale. Elevated to an orbital view of a scene as if looking down from space, or as if looking up from the perspective of a faltering atomic nucleus, things aren't just beautiful; they're awe-inspiring. A deeper humanity comes up, not through the selfish ego-centric will for 'man' to endure, but through bigger concepts, like 'life' and the cosmos, which will actually always be constant because they are always, on every level, in flux.

There's an easy assumption that leads the music of Blanck Mass to the world of the soundtrack; to be used against images of the natural world. True, such imagery would make ideal companions to the spirit of the album, and this type of musical leaning would serve such images well. But this is music in itself. Like a Zen garden, nature is enhanced with its own fibers. There is a careful, considered spacing of elements where what doesn't exist lends space to what is executed. Whilst you can't help but wonder what Blanck Mass would turn in if requested to soundtrack a natural history documentary, you know it would be wise to wish slowly. Without a director issuing instruction, it seems so much more rewarding to follow the gravity of Power's thoughts as they bubble up, lead a tune through one perspective, then a new texture, then an alternate scale.

Standout Tracks: “Sifted Gold,” Chernobyl”, “What You Know”

For Fans Of: Philip Glass, Arvo Part, Fuck Buttons