Short Reviews [Electric Bird Noise - 2014 - "Birth"]

The US project ELECTRIC BIRD NOISE is the long ongoing creative vehicle of composer and musician Brian Lea McKenzie, who for 20 odd years has defied genre conventions and any amount of predictable features and approaches to the music he creates. The EP "Birth" dates back to December 2014, and was released by the US label Silber Records. On the four tracks featured on this production, the opening three all concentrate on one specific approach: plucked guitar details focusing on odd and unusual tonal choices, echoes and reverbs to create eerie, dark and haunting soundscapes, contrasting the relatively fragile plucked instrument details with occasional firmer, harder edged sounds and effects. The end result is some sort of nightmarish, psychedelic landscape with a subtle avant-garde orientation, the subtlest musical score of your creepiest nightmares given life, if you like. The concluding track explores a similar landscape, but now by the use of surging sounds, effects and drones, developing from a dark, unnerving opening phase to a light-toned, shrill and bleak atmosphere, giving way to associations of desolate, barren alien landscapes. If the idiom “minimalist creations with slight bows towards psychedelic and avant-garde music” sounds like a good thing to you, and you have a tendency to enjoy music that comes with a high degree of a lurking fear factor incorporated, then this EP is one that merits a check. This is not progressive rock, but music and soundscapes that should intrigue first and foremost those with an affection for experimental electronic ventures.