black_hole is about an experience just beyond our grasp. Composed by MDN using live coding, they attempt to convey their near-death experiences during childhood. Whilst the experience of our demise is daunting to dwell on, it’s easy to occasionally consider what is over that particular horizon?
Clearly belief systems colour what some may think, and the hard existential angle might well err on the inky black nothing, but MDN works on the assumption that “all beings are singularity material.” That we grow from and return to a vast ever tumbling de- and regenerating stew of the universe.
Wherever the challenging impetus for this new album formed, the potential for something overtly negative is avoided. Built using two live sessions with Orca, OP-1, and Hydra video synths these two 15-minute drones are both far more active than the premise might initially suggest.
Perhaps more than any other forms of music, drones seem to perfectly convey the vastness of space, the throb of energy and the expansion of understanding. Our mind and ears, are far more aware of minute and incremental developments in the seemingly static sounds that we often first think.
The first piece x-ray slowly enlarges before eventually tiny bells, organ tones and glitchy fractures appear out the drift. The elements all seem to grow into deep zoetrope rhythms that rise and fall just out of sight.
The second piece time_dilation is somehow more fragmented and agitated before curling into a carousel of sparkles. Eventually the whole thing rises like a lost radio transmission galloping towards the light.
black_hole somehow follows the odd arc of its sleeve, and title, a black hole in the form of an inverted (negative) image, being the starting point towards something undefinable but still somehow welcoming. Happy and vast music from the brink…
black_hole is out now on Crash Symbols, and available on cassette and digitally
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