DIGITAL::NIMBUS :: Electronic Audio Freakquencies
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It’s difficult to classify what constitutes experimental electronica, considering the genre’s increasing penchant for unstructured melodies and general ambience. That established, it can be said with some confidence that the music of Drifting in Silence, the umbrella pseudonym for instrumentalist Derrick Stembridge, is a good example of it. Stembridge’s fifth release Facewithin lies somewhere in between cinematic mood music and an adrenalized video game opus, dressed in a muscular mystique that could be likened to soundtracks for Fight Club, The Matrix, and even Half-Life 2.
Thankfully, Facewithin is true to its aura-crafting purposes, laying off the tired crutches of clubbing music in favor of new age theater. For what it is and what it aims to do, Facewithin is undoubtedly a success, despite its tendency to stand more as a testament to Stembridge’s talent than any sort of united vision.
Then again, the latter point is somewhat of a relief: though Facewithin often strives to be a concept album, its overall effect is nowhere as ham-handed. There are no numbered pieces or character narratives, nor some sort of dystopian metaphor beneath all the musical current. Facewithin is instead scattershot: it spreads it tentacles in different directions, preferring gray and airy sounds paired with driving percussion as substitution for recurring melodies. It is thus freer than the music of, say, Outputmessage or Mint Royale, who rely on pop strategies to deliver their electronic bliss.
It is a credit to Stembridge, then, that Facewithin remains engaging despite the noticeable lack of melodic coherence. Dealing in a palette of razor tones and other crisp sounds, one would think that Drifting in Silence could never achieve the sonic glory that bursts forth from fellow instrumentalists like Explosions in the Sky, with their bell-like guitarwork and climbing melodies. Yet the musical handicap never truly cripples Facewithin, with pieces such as Coming Up For Air and Misunderstood managing to escape the bittersweet designation of good driving music.
In reality, Facewithin’s greatest weakness is its brevity – consisting of five original tracks and three remixes, many listeners may wish for Stembridge to take a breath and expand beyond the rather quick half-hour running time. The cinematic flair is therefore a tad clipped, though it does nothing to drown Stembridge’s other talents. For a self-described symphonic project, Drifting in Silence remains unnaturally disciplined and rarely contrived – a welcome, if unexpected, pleasure.
Rating: 4/5 Stars
Drifting in Silence stirs up driving rhythms and industrial beats in the new album, Facewithin. Some tracks I can imagine hearing at a trendy lounge bar, and others at a dance club. My favorites on the album are “Virus” and “Facewithin,” as both have an edgy darkness to them that really allows the music to develop a mood. “Forever” is another incredibly unique track, sampling a preacher’s fire and brimstone speech alongside heavy beats.
I love when music can inspire creativity, and listening to Facewithin will do that. I can’t help but picture the scenes that go along with the tracks, making the album a full experience instead of just songs.
Facewithin will be released by Labile Records in April, and until then you can read more about Drifting in Silence on the band’s MySpace page here: www.myspace.com/driftinginsilence
Or on the Drifting in Silence website here: Drifting in Silence
Multi-instrumentalist Derrick Stembridge lies behind this synth lover’s dream. Fallto opens with the soundtrack-style instrumental, Without Time, awash with fizzing, orchestral synth lines painting sweeping ambient landscapes – a gorgeous opener for synth addicts.
Stembridge’s influences are fairly obvious, the title track lives and breathes Apex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works, although the vocoded vocals – used often throughout the album, place the track within a more traditional, song-based format. However, the other half of Stembridge is unmistakeably provoked by the EBM genre, Unknown Divide surprises for its aggressive percussion and doom-laden synth pads, which verge on industrial-sounding at times, but seem a little out of place in the overall context of the album, even if Fallto switches between reverb-lashed ethereal landscapes and clubby EBM almost continuously.
Chameleon, with its incomprehensible vocoded vocals gliding ruefully over melodic keyboards, jagged mechanical pulses and toughened beats, again leans strongly towards the old-fashioned EBM genre. Two remixes of the track are provided, by Drev and 3l3tronic’s more contemporary IDM remix.
Personally, I find this Drifting In Silence project more consumable when it swings towards the ambient/IDM side, then you can sit back and dissect Stembridge’s complex arrangement of multiple synthesiser passages. The anthemic Closure is perhaps the best proof that a full-on ambient/ethereal album would have been more palatable than Fallto’s gregarious mixture of styles. When Stembridge chooses dense layers and airy soundscapes, Fallto sounds relevant and contemporary, when it leans towards EBM it quickly becomes passé.
Drifting in Silence is featured in the May 2008 issue of Electronic Musician via the Soundtrack of the Month section. “Unexpected yet complementary timbres come together, melting the boundaries between all genres.”
Um, wow. I love getting blown away by an album or a band that I’ve never heard of before. It doesn’t happen that much anymore, and with more music being released every year than the year before, the signal-to-noise ratio gets lower and finding awesome bands or albums gets harder. Fallto by Drifting In Silence (aka Derrick Stembridge) makes sorting through the dreck worthwhile, with a sound wavering between industrial (“Chameleon” and its two remixes) epic, cinematic ambient dance (“Pretend,” “Meaning of Life”), and grand cathedrals of sound (“Closure”). Embracing Autechre, Tangerine Dream and lesser bands on the Wax Trax! label (Borghesia or Pankow, maybe?) as influences, Stembridge blends their respective aesthetics together and spits back a stone classic. We’re getting close to the end of the year, and I know this one will be near the top of my list. The only problem with Fallto is that its too short! Cutting the two remixes (which are mostly extraneous, although the “Drev Remix” is a real EBM stomper) at the end, this runs only 40 minutes. And while that’s enough to whet my whistle, I wish there was more. Excellence like this doesn’t come along that often.
Drifting in Silence strives to make dance music for those who’ve never quite felt comfortable making eye contact with anything other than their footwear. But Nashville’s Derrick Stembridge, who handles everything from fuzzbox to drum machine, creates a vibe more apt for late-night lounging than for dance-floor euphoria. On Fallto, moods shift from meditative to driving and rhythmic, shaping expansive soundscapes that Stembridge litters with slow-burning melodies. Stembridge is at his best when creating would-be scores for films from your favorite deconstructionist (“Meaning of Life”), but things can take a plodding turn when vocal tracks are vocodered into superfluity (“Unknowndivide”). In the end, it doesn’t matter if your eyes are closed, on the floor, or looking up to space, as long as you’re hearing the music.
Drifting in Silence ‘face within’ (Labile). Press release describes the sounds within as -
‘shimmering ambience’s driven by groove rhythms and punctuated by instrumental riffs and snatches of concrete sounds’.
Now keep that thought in mind.
Second full length from Derrick Stembridge (for it is he who is Drifting in Silence) following his debuting 2007 opus ‘Chameleon’ which incidentally we disappointingly missed here. And we here are not kidding when we note our disappointment because if this 5 track set (with an additional three guest remixes) is anything to judge by then it seems we missed out on a treat.
Based in Chicago, Drifting in Silence does indeed sculpture a compelling dream weaving ambient canvas and ’face within’ is indeed by our reckoning a release best enjoyed and savoured alone plugged into a set of headphones, the volume racked to maximum and with eyes closed so that you can view those strangely dissipating shapes that form behind the eyelids and imagine them as cosmically strewn night lights illuminating celestial voids with the sounds piping into your psyche acting as a colourfully vivid backdrop for the flight in hand.
If there’s any complaint to be made about this set its just a small one because I won’t bother having you believe that Mr Stembridge pushes the ambient envelope in any given direction because – he doesn’t.
Instead this brand of dark ambience is tweaked and twisted upon a framing of mid 80’s euro disko accents (the opening salvo ‘forever’ lending itself to detectable elements of Front 242) and industrial dialects all abridged and set upon a gothically grand wide screen mounting. Mood wise its all at once dreamy and detached, at times bleakly beautifully at others clinically sparse and ominously sterile, amid the star crossed liquid like loosely connected techno textures leviathan like swathes swirl and weave almost as though navigating some given deep space trajectory (especially on the lonesome motorik beat laced epically tear stained and frosted overtures of the stately and orbiting ‘coming up for air’). It’s a consuming and compulsive listening experience the reference markers pointing in the general location of the likes of Plaid, FSOL and Apollo 440 while the appearance of the apocalyptic touches throughout hark back to a familiar landscape carved by Gary Numan’s darkly manifesting ’Pure’ set especially on the title track – its something that’s brought into sharper perspective by the ‘her odd fist’ remix of ‘face within’. ‘coming up for air’. That said ‘virus’ momentarily breaks itself free of the shackles and for awhile could – if that is our ears do not deceive – pass for the more reflective moments from Porcupine Tree’s ‘stupid dream’ set gorgeously braided as it is with parched acoustic pickings and the hollowed sound of hazy vocals piercing through the ether.
As said three additional remixes of ‘face within’ bolster the set, the previously mentioned ‘her odd fist’ along with the ‘drev remix’ and the ‘Anthony Baldino remix – amid the haze of over loading communicative traffic the former applies a spot of groove space tweaking face lifting to his re-engineering imparting a sumptuously vibrant wall of crystalline celestially tipped effervescent turbulence to the proceedings while Mr Baldino for his part supplants a hitherto to more minimalist and monochrome viewpoint, much reminiscent of a crooked latter career dark hearted Orbital the intricately busy and haunting swathes are eked out to form a curious though attractive dislocated techno funk matrix. Recommended listening. www.labilerecords.com
Key tracks – ‘Virus’, ’Coming up for air‘.
