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COELACANTH
THE GLASS SPONGE
reviewed by Andrew Culler for Brainwashed.com,
Volume 06 / Issue 40 - 10/12/2003
23five came into the public eye as the label vehicle for sound
artist-types, peddling the kind of stuff I'd see in the MoMA
gift shop and pass by thinking it just wouldn't be the same
outside an austere gallery space. Now only 6 releases into stride,
the label has proved me wrong several times over. One needs
only to hear Furudate & Zbigniew's World As Will II
to see why. The opening minutes of Coelacanth's sophomore release,
however, left me with second, or rather third, thoughts. The
Glass Sponge begins with a sparse scraping, thumping, and
clanging that seems on the brink the ever-arty black hole of
inaccessibility. After a few minutes, droning bell tones and
tempered feedback ease their way in, making the piece more substantial
before, as quickly as it began, the music fades into silence.
Those opening bits were merely a prelude to the real meat of
track, a sort of second act comprised of layered static and
an enriched texture of lulling feedback and prolonged bell tones.
Stuttering vocal utterings rise from drone and static layers
that sound truly oceanic. Song titles like "The Leaden Sea"
and "The Violet Shell and Its Raft" lend a marine theme to The
Glass Sponge that feels apt in relation to the music. (The name
Coelacanth, also, refers to a prehistoric fish recently discovered
to still exist). All four tracks exhibit an approach to drone
music that is both texturally rich and emotionally resonant.
Tracks range from gentle, inviting trips across static that
gurgles and glimmers like actual liquid to eerie passages where
hollow drones and squealing feedback rise from the depths. The
Glass Sponge is host to a multitude of bizarre, untraceable
sounds as well. Various throbbings, tinkerings, and knockings
find comfortable home in Coelacanth's sound world, given overture
in the album's first moments, making it increasingly hard to
believe that any of this was gathered from public performance
as the notes describe. This is beautiful, thoroughly engaging,
and unique music, no doubt more appropriate headphone music
for pretending your bed is a liferaft than for strolling the
museum floor.
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