apollolaan reviewed in Terrascope

ANDREW PAINE – FIVE PERSPECTIVES CD-R

DRMWPN – BRIGHT BLUE GALILEE CD-R

SINDRE BJERGA – ANGEL HEART, SPARKLING WITH FIRE CD-R

(www.apollolaan.co.uk)



Specialising in short-run, hand painted CDRs, Apollolaan releases are blessed with quality and variety, the emphasis on the individual and experimental. Judging by these three albums, it is a venture well worth supporting, especially as the founder is a regular visitor to the Terrascope forums.



Home to just one long track, “Five Perspectives (or the same event)”, is a slowly building piece that opens with the repeated refrain “I Was Born To Silence”, hypnotising you the chant gradually fading as other instrumentation takes over. With whispers of synths and whistles, the sounds creep into being, until a wave of distorted drone flows into the music, fragile and beautiful, the sound ever rising, until, it too, is lost, the vocals re-asserting themselves, painting some wonderful, evocative images behind your retina. From here on in a meditative minimalism is to be found, rustles of sound curling around the words, the return of the drone more gossamer than before, cloaking the piece in mist before everything is silence.



Featuring a host of ethnic instruments, plus electronics, guitars, drums, bass, etc, “Bright Blue Galilee” is another extended piece that is given plenty of room to grow and change, the result crackling with vitality, reminding me work by United Bible Studies. With rattled percussion and chanted vocals, the piece has a spiritual dimension at its start, the very psychedelic sound encouraging you to turn off the lights and listen completely. Having drawn you in however, the music is slowly absorbed into a different piece and you find yourself listening to drifting electronics and scattered drums, not completely sure when the music changed, but enjoying the effect it is having. Finally the music flutter and stops and you realise half an hour has passed in the blink of an eye or a thousand years, such is the power of this compelling sound.



Recorded in a Methodist church in 2008, the live piece from Norwegian Sindre Bjerga, sounds as if the church in question has been submerged at the bottom of the sea, haunted and almost forgotten. Using the silence between sounds as much as the sound itself, the piece is abstract and calming, the electronics darting around the room, creating a completely different environment. As the music progresses however, the ghostly congregation makes its presence felt, the music becoming slightly uncomfortable, a presence just out of sight, until a roar of white noise fills the room with sound, obliterating what has gone before, the piece fading finally to rest on the ocean floor.



So, three wonderful discs that require several spins to unlock their beauty, but are well worth the effort to do so. (Simon Lewis)