GENERIC : TORTURE
Fractured Spaces Records
I can think of a number of situations in which you would not want to be listening to “Torture”, the debut album from Adam Sykes’ dark ambient project, Generic. All of them start with the word ‘alone’. Alone in a forest at night. Alone in a factory. Alone near any stretch of water. Hell, alone in my house in the middle of the day with the sun shining and birds singing outside has nearly terrified me half to death. Like the soundtrack to unspeakable horror which never actually pounces, but looms around the corner waiting even when the disc stops spinning, “Torture” has a heart-stopping atmosphere that makes it uncomfortable to hear even though it is subtle and unhurried at all times.
Generic’s approach combines deep, echoing, pulsing rumbling ambient drones with loops of semi-industrial sound and sound effects textured over to create tracks with a cold, threatening relentlessness and inevitability. Adam uses the sound effects and foley track methods employed in television and film to build in metallic clanks, footfalls, scrapes, bumps and slams. The way in which this is cleverly moulded into a musical endeavour is evident from “Torture Garden V”, which loops crashing metal of different tones into a non-stop, precise rhythm.
On other tracks, the effects are less predictable. On “Torture Garden I” the door slams that echo over the pulsing drone and deep bassy rumbles in the later sections of the track have the sound of wing-flaps, and something semi-organic. An unexpected squeal of metal at “Torture Garden I”’s conclusion turns this on its head rather scarily. “Torture Garden III” features one of the most frightening sounds on the album, a perpetual but uneven scrape, scrape of metal on metal or stone. When a higher, harsher tone ebbs in over the normal, deep drone towards the end of the track, it’s like an industrial breath has been taken.
Another sparingly used but highly effective feature on this album is distorted, partly-audible chanting, as on “Torture Garden IV”. Again, this keeps the listener guessing at whether the horror of this music, which will keep your muscles clenched for its entire 50 minute duration, is human, animal, alien, machine or something ‘other’, that the mind hasn’t fathomed yet. Deeply disturbing and filled with an occult darkness, “Torture” is a triumph of atmosphere, and shows Generic to be as strong as any of the projects previously signed to Adam’s Iris Light label. The elements used may be generic- the outcome is far less so.
80/100
