November 2006 • Gipsy Sphinx
I'm slowly beginning to realize that I think I like drone a lot more than I actually do. Maybe it's just the stuff I've been listening to recently, but I have heard a lot of the stuff and aside from artists like Tim Hecker or Sunn O))) it really doesn't appeal much to me. That, or Mirage of the Other really is a horrible album; hard to say. It's definitely a boring one, that's for sure.
Its three long tracks stretch out a handful of sounds each to their breaking points—mostly droning voices, guitar drenched in pedal effects, feedback, and subtle noise. It's actually not so bad in theory, and it's a setup that's worked many times before. The atmosphere is quite pleasant, calming; not necessarily beautiful, or serene, but nice enough. It just about always keeps to itself, never becoming actually noisy or harsh or loud.
But it would have worked much better if each track were, say, two minutes long instead of six or ten or twenty. Even in that twenty-minute track, the sound never changes—it's the exact same drone played continuously and nothing else. I like to think I have a good enough attention span for drawn-out music, but this just takes it too damn far. Try skipping around any of the three tracks: "Incandescent Landscape" goes from "quiet guitar noise" to "the same guitar noise, but slightly lounder". Nothing happens. Well, there are subtleties—the guitar lines wax and wane a bit, which is neat to hear for the first minute or so, but after that it becomes pointless.
Another recommendation for background music only, I suppose; as hard as I tried it was impossible to listen attentively to the whole thing as I found myself going into a stupor. Why is it so hard to find drone with focus?
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