Review:

on 2011-02-25 DaddyTank Said:

Drum machines encrusted in lichen, fossilised synths and haunted cassette tapes are all present for Dissolveds latest excavation. If you are not familiar with the specialist field of archaeo-acoustics in which he operates, this would be a useful instruction manual. Listening to this album is like voyaging through a prehistoric world of primal sounds, cocooned in an ultra high specification Jules Verne style dreadnaught. Occasionally, through the fog, some luminescent tentacled beast will glower at you through a porthole, or some fascinating slime mould will reproduce in fractal patterns on the periscope, but you will be safe inside the crunching modern rythmns of your vessel. The fusion of old and new is comforting but also unsettling. It seems like some of these recordings have always existed and sometimes, while you are listening, it is possible to sink into the extended moments he creates and feel like you never want to leave.
Dissolved makes music for total immersion. Yes, occasionally he may make some sound that makes you want to jump up and down while waving your arms about in a form akin to dancing, but for the most part he just wants to show you things&audio things that skitter around in the valleys of your brain, tweaking axons and dendrons, playing memories of a childhood that you never had, but feel like maybe you wish you had.
One of the many things I like about Dissolved, and I may have said this before, is that I dont think he cares one iota whether people listen to his music. In fact, I can envisage a post-apocalyptic future where you are wandering through the fog in rags, and in the distance you hear some pounding IDM beats. Confused you wander closer and hear some hugely-sustained synth noises, merging with the gloom and the occasional snatches of some time-distanced, ghostly tape voices. Walking gingerly into the cave from which these sounds emanate, you see a bearded and wizened old man, surrounded by dirty malfunctioning equipment powered by wires attached to his own cranium. He is bashing away at half a keyboard that emerges from a tangle of wires and moss covered monitors. There is a good chance that that man is Dissolved.

(For people who like more functional reviews, Snowy Psychoplasmics is really very good. It comes with a free full length album The Beachcombers Scrying Mirror and three free artcards designed by Dissolved, who is, rather annoyingly, a pretty good photographer as well. It is available from Daddy Tank Records from the 4th March 2011)
Rating: 10/10