Album Review: Equal Stones- Transgression


Much to my surprise, the other day, the head of the Hidden Vibes label hit me up via Twitter, to inquire about sending in an album for review. Much to his surprise, I had heard of Hidden Vibes thanks to the continued excellence of Justin Snow over at the experimental/drone/ambient site Anti-Gravity Bunny.

The album in question here is Transgression, the new four-track effort from Equal Stones, the work of a Netherlands-based artist named Amandus Schaap.

To say that this is “heavy duty” is beyond an understatement.

Exploring the darker, less comforting side of experimental and ambient music, Schaap’s work with Transgression haunts and disconcerts (specifically haunting with the disembodied vocal sounds on the opening piece, “Set Free.”) It’s borderline abrasive at times, and once the pieces get going, the thick and claustrophobic atmosphere can be unrelenting.

Which is to say, it’s pretty good.

I mean, if you are really into unsettling experimental music.

The entire set is incredibly solid, and very well assembled, but it really hits its stride on the second piece, “We All Fall.” After slowly building up a wall of static, scratches, and what is described in the press release as “microsounds,” long stretches of mournful guitar drones and synth waves come cascading in. It’s one of the few moments on Transgression that captures how ambient music can both be incredibly beautiful and heartbreaking, while still managing to be rather unnerving.

On the multi-movement “Reject All You Have Learned,” oscillating layers of feedback give way to various blasts of shimmering, then later aggressive sounding static, before finally finishing out on a rather dreadful, ominous note in the final few minutes.

Transgression closes up with the incredibly jarring, cacophonic “Death at Both Ends;” seven minutes that juxtaposes a heavily processed and decaying drum loop, with layers and layers of droning and screeching feedback that only become louder and more prevalent over time, before it all slowly fades into the distance, becoming a memory you are unable to shake.

As I’ve alluded to before with other reviews of ambient/experimental/drone albums, once you discover one artist within the genre, or one label, it’s only a matter of time before you find more, and then you are sucked into a never-ending abyss of Bandcamp pages and limited edition cassette releases. Equal Stones’ Transgression is a very definitive statement on the sheer power that music like this has, showing the ability to create a fractured, unconventional beauty from the harshest of sounds.

Transgression is out now as a free download, or on vinyl, via Hidden Vibes.

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