In front of me is the second output by Steve Davis (+DOG+) and Jim Szudy (Nihil Omnia, Fellahean and Blue Collar Calling with Steve Meketa). About six months ago, I had the pleasure of reviewing their first self-titled collaboration. I ended that with ‘I hope there will be more of this duo in time’. And I only had to wait 6 months! Great to have artists listening to your advice. giggles But without kidding, Steve and Jim continue where they left off on that first release, and they’re doing a mighty fine job together.
Fifteen tracks are on this album, and the timestamp is between 3 and 6 minutes, resulting in almost 70 minutes of a great party album for sick minds. There are many noise styles these guys are exploring and experimenting with. It ranges from droning, throbbing loops of unknown origin towards harsh extrusions of sound, again some hypnotic experiments and even a bit of a death ambient feeling that would scare a thunderstorm away. But then there is that big question: If this album is, style-wise, so dynamic, isn’t that a problem for the overall flow? Well, with a big question comes an answer that explains everything: No! Because that’s the beauty of it!
“II” is an album of extremes, but not in loudness or harshness. It’s the extremes of emotional charge used to work on the composition. You can hear that each track is carefully taken care of in whatever way Steve and Jim chose to collaborate (this part is still a mystery to me, and I haven’t spoken to either of them about the method). But it’s like they’ve taken up a particular track and worked on that until they said it was finished without diversion or doing something else simultaneously. It is as if each of the tracks is dedicated; They’re small short stories with a particular subject, and they didn’t stop until it was done. And then they continued to the next. And the result is that the 15 stories are uniform in their composition, even though there are 15 stories, with 15 main characters and 15 storylines.
I hope this makes sense to some of you because I greatly like this one.
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