Customer Reviews

Viscous Solid

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This is a rather ambient affair. It is very abstract. Maybe more like some of Plaid's and Autechre's more non commercial things. A lot of spooky sounds for an hour. Maybe more like soundtrack music. It is relaxing. It's shocking to hear some guitar on "Blue Eyed Bitter." It is post-industrial, post-hiphop, and post-techno. Probably what the characters in the film Minority Report listen to. After listening to something mentally bankrupt like Royal City. this record is wonderful.

Geoff White adopts the moniker Aeroc for his first release on Ghostly International, VISCOUS SOLID. And while the title may be an oxymoron, White manages to blend glitchy IDM with acoustic guitar work into an organic whole, with the earthy balancing the technology. The first track, "My Love, The Wave Break" (a reference to Octavio Paz's famous short story) sets the bucolic tone that the rest of the album will follow. "Mahy" brings a fragile delicacy to the guitar work that's underwritten by the clicks and whirs. Other more ambient tracks eschew the guitar (or reduce them to processed plucks, like on "Rockets Can't Get the Stars" or "Enter"), but retain a moody tonal quality reminiscent of Biosphere's work. "Onward... Upward," however, sounds like a folk-rock song that's had its percussion mugged by a mainframe, while "Please Go Wrong" is a hymn played through a malfunctioning Speak-N-Spell. "Summer's Almost Over" returns us to the beginning, where guitar and computer merged into one being.