Daniel Menche, William Fowler Collins

Opening the album with a harmonious set of gently spiraling tones, Daniel Menche’s piece “Raised Coils of the Giant Serpent of Eternity” offers only this brief moment of serenity before a headlong dive into a cacophonous abyss of darker dimensions. Suspended in pools of liquid bass, layers of molten brass hover, dissolve and reappear. Pitches rise and fall, intersecting for brief periods of melodic convergence before crumbling again into heaving slabs of rumbling dissonance. Closing out the piece a low and solemn tone emerges from the roar of Menche’s spectral orchestra, seeming less like resolve, than the final flickering breath of a dying star.

Conversely, William Fowler Collins’ offering on the second side remains in a state of subdued tension for much of its duration. Primarily constructed around the emanations of decayed strings, these glimmering filaments seem in perpetual retreat from comfortable stasis or momentous upheaval. Swaying over a backdrop of inky black, disharmonious clusters gradually pile one over the other, pulling apart and recombining, eventually forming a jagged and unsettling crest. From here bilious clouds of humming static overtake the disintegrating strings, appearing long enough to set the stage for the conclusion of the narrative. Much like the opening Menche’s piece on the reverse side, Collins’ gently cascading sheaves of brushed guitar that close out the album serve as a small enclave of comfort in the otherwise lightless caverns through which he and Menche have driven the listener.