NANA APRIL JUN – The Ontology Of Noise

Touch

Even before perusing the cover and the press release I had instinctively associated the materials heard in The Ontology Of Noise to names such as Carl Michael Von Hausswolff, Leif Elggren and Kent Tankred; in fact, Annika Von Hausswolff is thanked by the composer, a Swedish himself (born as Christofer Lämgren) who adopts various monikers including, of course, Nana April Jun. Another term of comparison for these soundscapes might be KTL, if only for the stretching occlusive resonances and prohibitory reverberations obtained through computerized means exclusively, without inputs from actual instruments. NAJ calls these tracks “single streams which change intuitively”, associating parts of them with natural phenomena. There’s a truth to those words: take for example “Space – Time Continuum”, literally sounding like a sandstorm corroborated by some kind of hollow echo in the background. You should not look for definitive affirmations in the 36 minutes plus of this sternly impressive disc, though: the aural matter is malleable and inflexible at one and the same time, prepotency and mysterious poetry alternated in a knowledgeable manipulation of mainly toneless, overcast gradations which seem to announce explosions of brutality that never materialize entirely. The final “Sun Wind Darkness Eye” leaves us in the company of a mechanical sort of fast-paced heartbeat, as to remind that a man sits behind these bleak scenarios, whose cathartic potential is indubitable, at least until the whole ends abruptly. I’ll pretend to forget that the record “researches the dark associations of post-black metal”. Being more explicit, who cares?