Lawry Zilmrah, a.k.a Lawry Romani, works with everything ranging from handmade instruments to modular synths and from what Discogs can tell me, this might be his first full-length album. It is released on the consistently productive and highly acclaimed Love Earth Music from New England, so we might have a little indication of where this will bring the listener.
“Hallucinatory X-Ray Visions” is only 32 minutes in total, which is a bit on the short side. But as the Atrax Morgue CD reviewed in this Vital was only 31 minutes, I’ll take it. The tracks range from approximately 3 to 7 minutes and carry dadaist names like “Serial Prognosticator” and “Algorithmic Personality Syndrome”. Maybe a fair dose of LSD should be given away with each sold album to get into another realm of reality; who knows, maybe the chameleon on the cover is drenched in it! (Oh no, I’m mixing them with Sonoran Desert toads).
Musically, there is a lot of sampling and resampling of sounds and some proper manipulation in between. It’s hard to find the origin of the sounds and the ‘handmade instruments’ Lawry uses. It’s all manipulated, even though authentic distorted pieces are not the main ingredient of the album. When it’s all too distorted, it tends to become more of a broken wall of sound, and in these compositions, there is still enough clarity and open space to enjoy the music. Sure, there are moments where it all gets completely garbled, but those moments seem to have a function too.
After several listens, I’m still puzzled by the release. It’s not something I haven’t heard before, but at the same moment, Lawry has quite an original approach to things. Next to the cutup electro acoustics, there are scarce moments where the rhythmic tendency comes forward and other moments where the hypnotism comes from a droney layered soundscape (the algorithm track). Towards the end, the expression gets more extreme (read: noisy), which are the moments you can get lost in this release. For a first full album: Proper! I wouldn’t mind hearing more.
Comments
Post a Comment