Divination – Distill

BILL LASWELL's prime ambient project reads more like a compilation album than a combined project between several A-list musicians & composers.
The first disc starts off with "Green Evil" by PAUL SCHUTZE, managing to be both busily complicated and ively tranquil at the same time. Yes, there is a certain evil to the music - not overstated or vividly defined, but present nevertheless. There's something of a built-up LULL with undertones of pitch shifting to this piece. Ever played the game "Silent Hill"? Ever wondered about the secret life of the blood-spattered birdcage? This is the theme to what goes on inside that cage, when there's no-one around to witness it.

"Subharmonic Invocation Of The Dark Spirit" by PETE NAMLOOK keeps a very similar moodscape going. Less complicated, this is more the audio documentation of large whale-like bodies ing by, indistinct, bassy but enormous leviathans gliding through the aether. Both quiet and hugely powerful, the muscles of giants working with graceful violence. Gentle breezes blow over grassy hillsides as the last intelligent inhabitants fly their graceful spacecraft from the doomed planet's gravity-grip.

HARUOMI HOSONO brings us "Ether Vibes", a definite change in course from the earlier pieces. A simple rhythm through delays wallows in the sustaining, cycling layers of processed noise and electronics which makes up the background. The overall effect is curiously bleached, stark bare bones mood music from the cannibalistic tribe living next door.

MICK HARRIS's attitudes are at the forefront with the blunt "There". MICK loves deep tones which yer average stereo just can't do justice to. This track is no exception - the foundation on which the various layers reside vibrates the guts while loop piles on loop to form a striated artwork of metal and velvet. It acts as a cyclic machine, the slow flywheel of some bizarre Victorian mechanism, overly ornate for its functional use, and somehow much more worthy for it.

THOMAS KÖNER never lets us down, appearing here with the added (ASYNC SENSE). The track "Zone" opens the second disc, creating the strange atmosphere of some ghostly ballroom with a 1920s atmosphere caught in frozen stasis while a mechanical locomotive sound moves quickly across Mad Scientist sleepers to the end of the night. Curiously close to dance music, with hints of TANGERINE DREAM circa "White Eagle".

"Blue Filter" by ANTON FIER takes us towards a more abstract mood music - like the PAUL SCHUTZE track from the first disc it manages to be busy and complex while remaining moody. Not a track you could easily relax to, this seems to be on edge, poised to plunge into a more brash, rhythmic structure, but never actually gets there.

"Interlink" by TETSU INOUE uses location recordings, washed out loops, muted sequences and a variety of other devices to create an Electronic Ambient Jazz which is stripped almost completely of meat, in it's own way totally redefining what we call 'Ambient' music. Washed. honed, polished and worn until it's a mere ghost of music, a compex, diaphanous hint at music, with barely any substance.

BILL LASWELL finishes off what is essentially his own project with the longest piece here by far - "Black Dangers", which clocks in at just under half an hour - 17 minutes more than the next longest. With this piece he returns the sound to a deeper, more sonorous depth, exploring a discrete world where the smallest sound es by like a fish in a huge, dark aquarium, the water murky until a body glides by close to the glass where it somehow suddenly gains clarity, detail depicted clearly. There's a kind of poetry to the tones, an arrangement which tries to communicate in a language all of it's own. A fascinating journey through the depths of uneasy dreamscape which could probably have survived release on it's own and have been lauded for it.

DIVINATION create a musical mystery which is the very cream of the genre. This is an album I really wish I had grown up with - makes you wonder that if all the music which will ever be made were available from an early age, what would you spend your life listening to? Ponder that!

Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.