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The prodigious machinist of Spacemusic Brendan Pollard thinks deeply, but mainly in timbre, tones and patterns. Throughout the brainscape juncture of The Zone of Malleable Fears (66'31") we spin far and away into indefinite realms. In the dynamic enactment of his modular synthesizer Pollard designs within the immensity of a system meant to fuel our journey to a time yet to come. The content of The Zone of Malleable Fears will never be mistaken for background music. It demands our attention, as only through active listening will we appreciate the invasion of our world by a sonic state such as this. Across 14 tracks Pollard does not quite calm the forces he has provoked. Dissonance and stark solitude warn of a pressing atonal nature. Forlorn, exposed and tentative, uninhabited hymns push their way out of a cloudy chorale prelude. While heightening the ominous character of the soundfield shapeless tangents suggest an uncommon inner life. Enriched by a surging mixture of murmuring dissonance, modulated effects and summoning Mellotron chords this album insists on living its own strange, beautiful independence. With stentorian synth leads unfurling over emerging layers of mechanized motifs the outward whorl of sequencer power ascends in a Berlin-School clockwork of notes. Overtaken by darkness Pollard's symphony of thought reveals itself in sundown celerity. A display of the greatness of the human mind The Zone of Malleable Fears seems to question the smallness of daily existence, and yearns for something more. Making music like this admits to a faith in the future... A day ahead when disquiet is only known by its faint echo trail - and dreams are not so vulnerable to daylight.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 8 June 2023 |
