Art of Noise (band) – Queen City Sounds and Art

With the soft shimmer of crystalline chimes and an enigmatic, mechanical beat and melancholic strings to usher in Lost Ark’s “A Fallen Angel Weeping,” the song feels more like a cinematic experience than one more musical. The percussive details convey a depth and distance like what you’re hearing is the sound of a gallery for sound generating sculptures with its own soundtrack so that the assembled sounds create their own complementary orchestra of noise. When the beat stops a little more than three and a half minutes into the song it’s like some essential feature has left the gallery and the sounds wind down with a descending drone, a single bell tone seeming to count down on notes on a scale and in the distance we hear a voice repeating the words “falling down” before it too disappears and later on a voice with an aspect like words put through a reverse delay signals the end of the song. In retrospect its a bit like a spooky and haunted Art of Noise song and one not attached to any particular genre of music that demands and commands attention on its own terms. Listen to “A Fallen Angel Weeping” on Spotify. The Lost Ark compilation Primus Impunctus from which the song is drawn became available on November 6, 2023.

Vessels to Motherland, photo courtesy the artists

Vessels to Motherland tap into a similar creative and sonic space as Art of Noise did in the 80s with a pure blend of archaic, textural sounds and modern electronic and avant-garde aesthetics. With its track “shenandora,” Vessels to Motherland created what sounds like a dialogue, a play written for cybernetic organisms in their natural mode of communication. Percussive sounds establish patterns and electronic tones weave intricate call and response dynamics that by the end of the song sounds a bit like foreboding dance music that dissolves into calm, repeating resonances that pulse with the satiation that intelligences that do not suffer the limitations of analog, organic life and its cycle of processes into which fatigue and sleep are built. Yet machines and digital existences too must update, repair and replenish in the face of the variations of stimulus to their own environment just like us humans. Vessels to Motherland brilliantly gives expression to that very concept without a single word spoken or sung in the song with a title that suggests an individual name whether of a consciousness or a place or a collective, a corporate entity, which adds yet another dimension to the level of creative work going on with the song. Listen to “shenandora” on Soundcloud, follow Vessels to Motherland at the links below and look out for the NYC-based duo’s full length album Machine Lieder set for release in 2022.