A record such as
Nicholas Szczepanik's hefty The Chiasmus is a pain to
review in several respects. This sort of sublimely expansive, drawn out
drone music simply resists verbal description. The album's haunting,
reverberating sound is, perhaps, encapsulated best by the album's title
- throughout the record, one is endowed with the intense feeling of
being dropped into a chasm in the Earth.
Szczepanik's
slow-moving electronic drone is industrial and subterranean. On the
third composition, for example, one hears a hollow, breathing hum
and the distant patter of rain and birds chattering; it's a sobering
juxtaposition between a menacing underworld and the vitality that
exists, fleeting, above. As the composition wears on, the mechanical
aspect of the piece grows and eventually fades, giving way to an
empty yet sensible airiness.
By contrast, the
fifth and final composition - and the longest, at nearly twenty
minutes - is consistently ethereal, ebbing and flowing with a sense
of ominous resolution. Despite its comparatively gossamer nature,
however, it retains the sense of being caught in a chasm thanks to
its slow-moving, echoing character. Like all of The Chiasmus,
it is intense, evocative, and overwhelmingly wonderful. The
album's main fault - and I consider this to be a flatly malevolent
operation on Szczepanik's part - is that it begins and ends with a
cruel, inexplicably brief burst of harsh noise. This unnecessary
manoeuvre is nothing short of a crime, seeing as the album itself needs to be played
loud to be enjoyed, but remains a comparatively insignificant (yet
still dreadful) pox on an otherwise immensely significant release.