Monolith Zero:

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Never Presence Forever:

Searching for Heaven in the Face of Hell
Living With Regret Without Regretting to Live

Fuck it’s cold in this bedroom. I’m busy typing away and I can’t feel my fingers anymore. I should put the heating on but I’m a tight bastard and a penny spent is a penny wasted in my book. So I’ll freeze my ample butt off cursing the Lord that the excess blubber around my waist doesn’t insolate me one little bit. The pleasures of reviewing knows no bounds. Enough of my problems…your not interested anyways to my suffering…instead you want to read about this release. Tell us oh cold fat one. Should we spend our money that we received from our obnoxious relatives at Xmas on this 4 track release? Maybe yes. Maybe no. Read into that what you will. If its any consolation I spent my money…my own by the way…on it and I’m still undecided as to whether that was one of my better purchases or not. You see this is a classic split release. Classic as in…your opinion on it will be split thanks to the participating artists.

Monolith Zero is first up for dissection and I’m afraid to say his two contributions sent chills down me for all the wrong reasons. The artist…and this is my first encounter with him…Adam Hudson mixes ambience with noise effects which no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t get into. When the music was minimalist ambient…almost silence as background…it appealed but then he sort of ruined it by bunging in random noise splurges and fucking up all his good work up to those points. Quiet followed by Noise. Repeated. Wait a minute. More noise. So under whelmed was I that I would have gouged my ears out just to hear something different. Which thinking about wouldn't be the smartest of ideas but you get my drift. Unfortunately he keeps returning to the noise aspects far too often for this old boy to be impressed by. Be ambient. Be noise. Don’t be both. You can’t pull it off…as the vicar said to the nun.

Never Presence Forever…a quick search of my collection revealed I actually have three releases of his which I had completely forgotten about…also contributes two tracks. Here the artist Andrew Westerhouse works within a combination of fuzzy static imploding drones with black ambience and…you’ve guessed it…noise. The difference between them being that Andrew has a more cinematic view on how music can be developed into shifting dark Industrial patterns whilst instilling the noise elements to compliment the pieces cohesively and not act as a distraction for the listener. His polished pieces intertwine with each other making for one long seminal piece of quite challenging electronics that mixes genres smoothly and with some distinction.

A split release and a split verdict. On this showing I would rather cosy up to the music of Never Presence Forever and give Monolith Zero a wide berth. Some of you who purchase it may think differently and go the other way. So be it. I’m only a cold reviewer who wants a place in the sun.

ANM