THE MISSING ENSEMBLE - zeropolis
(CD, low
impedance)
All of us, everybody, we are living in zeropolis. Any
kind of vision of bettering and enlightening the lives of people or building
the perfect state in a city built by the most honest and equal standards and
principles has been shattered by the individual’s wills, motivations,
fears and hopes. Big plans like Brazilia or Petersburg have turned into vast
slums filled with debris, pain and murder. Small scale visions like planned
suburban settlements, urban city projects and even rebellious retreats such
as Waco, have either burned down, hurt by revolts or are slowly drowing in
waves of hatred and crime working itself up from petty to grand. The suburbs
of Paris burning were a big sign that this is not just a restricted
phenomenen, not a phenomenen belonging to the third world and the
mega-agglomarations of human lives without the support and sustainability
needed, but also one of what calls itself the spearhead of western
civilisation. From the riots in LA to the Nazi-parades in Warsaw, the
western world just acts so shocked because the media puts its spotlights on
eruptions of problems but rarely ever on the problems itself, so we were
sitting in our easy chairs, watching sitcoms and worrying none at all.
Dystopia all around, but washing powder commercials on the coloured screen.
Underneath, at the sides and over our heads electric
current is running, the refridgerator is humming, the tv has its own static
background noise and heating, plumbing and air condition also add their own
special frequency of hissing and humming to what makes up our noise-infested
lives. Our minds are dumbing down and shutting out these constant noises,
just the same way we are shutting out inequality, crime and poverty in our
social lives. Happy with secondary experiences gathered from movies, big
parts of our brains are withering away by remaining unused, while other
parts are turning crazy from the noises stored there, locked safely away
from our conscious minds. Somewhere in the distance somebody is moving some
furniture producing a slight cracking and screeching sound. Out on the
street somebody is kicking or crashing some cans or wood and the echoe is
slowly dragging itself into our living rooms. In the hallway someone drops
his keys and the clattering sound echoes through the walls. All the while we
are leaning back and ignoring anything that might try to come to us.
The Missing Ensemble sounds as if they are taking these
noises and sounds, that were dragged to the background or locked away in the
subconscious by our minds, and then expanding and empowering them, bringing
them back into the light of our conscious minds, making us have to deal with
them on an open basis. They confront us with what is around us and inside
us, making us aware of the world we live in, of the places, structures and
workings so close to us that we are ignoring. And probably also of their
adverse effects on us, our minds and bodies.
Musically the tracks on “zeropolis” accordingly are
a very subtle and equally subconcious matter, sometimes offensive and
sometimes soothing, but mostly brutally honest and direct noise drones
filled with hissing, static, pressure and dense noise. I constantly have to
think of Wolf Eyes, as the only musical group at the moment going to the
same extremes musically within the same range of issues, but the Missing
Ensemble’s drones are a lot more static and fundamental, than Wolf Eyes
chaotic wailing and thundering. Where the one group likes to dwell in the
most grotesque and offensive pictures, the other one seems to favor a more
academic approach and hones its effectivenes by roughening up the basic
material while polishing off the rough edges. Finally, that makes for a much
more massive musical material, which enables the Missing Ensemble to work
with silence and low dynamics, whereas Wolf Eyes always has to go full
force. Slowly building, evolving, moving and washing away, all kinds of
noises appear within the aural range, sometimes at its lowest bottom,
sometimes testing the endurance of the listener. Of course, that is
straining and exhausting stuff, but also enriching and reliefing. It seems
as if that should tell us that 2000 years of musical theory about harmonies
and songstructures is just another part of what numbs our minds.
02/2007
