MP3 Mort aux vaches II - ELECTRONIC: Ambient

Referencing external & enhancing internal locations, manipulating semi-recognizable elements in structures of a re-arranged language of error. Destroyed music, broken sound, disturbed ambiance and the quest for the sublime.

6 MP3 Songs
ELECTRONIC: Ambient, AVANT GARDE: Sound Art

Show all album songs: Mort aux vaches II Songs


Details:
Back in the early '90s, a 19 year old kid made his first mark upon music as "the guitarist from Illusion Of Safety." That kid then went on to produce a couple of interesting records amongst his huge catalogue of sonic eccentricities, always seeming to be in the right place at the right time. It's unfortunate that Jim O'Rourke (the kid in question) would become the darling of the alt.rock and electronica circuits, while most of his fans would slight Illusion Of Safety as a second rate Industrial act. While the comparison between O'Rourke's pop-dork persona and Illusion Of Safety's explorations into sonic phenomonology is like apples and oranges, the overall quality of this Illusion of Safety album is completely superior to O'Rourke's adequate Mego album and to his dreadful "Insignificant." As this comparison may be falling apart while I write this, I'll end on the note that a bad orange will always suck next to a good apple!
Anyway, Dan Burke founded Illusion of Safety in the mid '80s as a schizophrenic continuation of Industrial Culture as a theatrical means of exposing the cracks within culture and human nature. It is true that a good number of the early Illusion Of Safety albums haven't aged all that well (including a number that O'Rourke worked on!); but Burke and his rotating core of collaborators certainly learned what worked (manipulated field recordings and disturbed ambience) and what didn't (grim media sound bites and hamfisted electro-shock rhythms). "In Opposition To Our Acceleration" finds a matured Illusion Of Safety deftly constructing psycholological tense atmospheres from amplified electrical currents, found sounds, microtonal guitar pluckery, and unnerving drones. The pinnacle of the album occurs during a collage from the chinese water torture of a very slow leak dripping into a bucket, alongside a distant choral chant and some nervous sustained tones. A few of the tracks do vector off into the MAX / MSP territory of timestretching samples and glitch fragmentation, but fits nicely into the textural potency of the album as a whole. Along with "Cancer" and "Probe", "In Opposition To Our Acceleration" is one of the best Illusion Of Safety albums.