Written by Lucas Schleicher
Sunday, 11 October 2009
The
far off screaming of a tortured mass inaugurates Nightmares' 7" EP,
sending a chilly wave of numbing synthesizer noise out into the world.
Jonathan Canaday, David Reed, and Mark Solotroff's work together is as
severe and indomitable as the product of their solo productions might
suggest. Though not as frightening as their namesake implies,
Nightmares' noise is oppressive and dense and more than a little
uncomfortable.
Of the three
releases from Nightmares this year, their 7" EP is the shortest and,
for that reason, most forgiving recording. Their brevity is about all
that makes these two songs tolerable. Both are filled with scores of
sickly synthesizer tones and hissing noise, which together induce a
claustrophobic tension and a nauseating sense of vertigo. Enjoyable
only to the extent that discomfort can be, "Floating Above the Tracks"
and "We Were Melded Together" do not allow for silence nor relief.
Though there are spaces between the sounds and the band avoids creating
an onslaught of pure noise, not one second goes that isn't tattooed by
menace. Whether atonal pockets of sound are bubbling up in the
background or long, obvious screeches of phased metallic noise are
ripping through the foreground, I always feel pressed beneath the
weight of Nightmares' unremitting electronics. The density they achieve
isn't the result of stereo-filling distortion, but the accomplishment
of psychological dread and volume. On the one hand, much of what is
oppressing about each song can be found in how one reacts to the band's
abstractions.
Whether or not I was
intended to hear people screaming or to imagine the extent of infinite
space while listening, I do hear and imagine those things and both
cause some exciting reactions. I'm never quite scared by what I hear,
but what's implied is enough to keep me on guard, always guessing what
might be around the next corner. On the other hand, both songs exhibit
the kind of spaciousness I'd typically associate with ambient music.
The songs aren't so congested that I can't hear events when they
happen. All the dissonant tones that pop up and wobble through the
songs are thus able to flex their muscle to the fullest extent. Because
of this sharp production and clarity I can make sense of what's
happening both in the noise and inbetween its various instantiations.
But, every moment is perverse and unfamiliar and haunted by an eternal
horizon. Canaday, Reed, and Solotroff convincingly portray a threat out
there somewhere, just beyond where you and I can see, but they never
reveal it. So when the needle reaches the end of the record and the
music stops, I'm almost a little too happy to put the record back in
its sleeve. I don't want to know what might happen were the record to
keep going.