Elian – Whispers, Then Silence

It’s always pleasant to be surprised by an album. With ever growing niche genres and a seemingly unstoppable tide of new artists filling every crack and corner of these niches, it has become increasingly rare to hear genuinely novel approaches to music…

Elian’s “Whispers, Then Silence” is a wonderful breath of fresh air – not because it eschews genre conventions entirely, but because of the blithe way it makes them irrelevant. Elian manages to recontextualise familiar electronic/drone structures into pieces that ebb and flow with a discernable élan-vital. Michael Duane Ferrell creates meandering compositions which carve out snaking, river-like paths – surprising the listener with their unexpected turns.

A track like “The Happy Cynicism of a Creative Mind” is a great example. Opening with reverb engulfed wind chimes, a fluttering and stuttering electronic static field provides the first unforeseeable turn less than a minute in. This then gives way to a campestral organ sequence, which in turn fades into a pulsing, breathy passage that subsequently grows into a growling, and guttural section that sounds like someone playing a drainpipe.

The happy cynicism of a creative mind

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THIS then becomes a fizzing and popping introduction to a distant field recording which builds through echoes and reverb into an appreciable note and peters out. The listener is not given enough time to tire of a single passage and never anticipates the next – yet it cannot be said that the piece merely consists of one idea after another, thrown together haphazardly; there is still cohesion to the track, a sense of purpose and an almost organic direction of growth.

Album closer “Lesson in Never Again” commences with an extended, wavering chord which abruptly collapses into a rustling recording which provides a backing to a series of reversed organ/piano notes. Slowly these notes build a melodic progression that takes us to the end of the album. It is a beautiful and fittingly strange ending for this collection.

Magnification and minimization

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There is a real variety of approaches within this album and, indeed, within each track on the album – a breadth of ideas and sounds that encompass passages of bold musicianship, abstract electronic trickery, field recordings, tape manipulation, and a fluctuating bi-polar approach to composition. It is, then, remarkable that a coherent vision can be intimated, yet this is the feat that Ferrell manages to pull off – variance without inconsistency, diversity without disunity. The broad strokes and apparently abrupt swatches of sonic material are what make this album initially exciting, though it is the details of structure and intricacies of sound-design that will make it one to return to and explore repeatedly. – Review by John McCaffrey for Fluid Radio

Release date: August 13th, 2010

Pre-order now via the Home Normal store here
Also soon to Experimedia here

www.homenormal.com
www.myspace.com/michaelduaneferrell