HOLLOWFONTS
“Black Brass”
(Masters Chemical Society)




 There is a place where we all suffer, a wasteland beyond this life that’s gray and sepia and dismal, and it’s eternal. I think some people call it hell, but I’m calling it Black Brass. Hollowfonts, the recording moniker of Tampa’s Michael J. O’Neal, has apparently seen this expanse and imposed his musical interpretation of it onto tape. O’Neal traffics in tectonic drone and experimental electronics, and his crushing compositions test the limits of the laws of physics and the boundaries between universes. I’m pretty sure there’s no escape from the gravitational forces of his sonics.

So, as sometimes happens, I have reviewed this masterful cassette over at the ol’ Critical Masses homestead. Here is a link to that review, and you can go there and check it out for the full effect. But I’m not going to leave you without some snippets to wet your whistle! Check it out, then clicky click, freakniks:

“When you’re buried, finally in the dirt, and a last word is spoken over your grave, you can rest…. All that will remain are your burial rites drifting through time on the wind, words intermingling with specters …”

“Hollowfonts returns with Black Brass, a tape commemorating the impossibility of existence and the struggle against and succumbing to the encroaching darkness.”

“Take those deep, soul-searching meanders through the shadows of meaninglessness, and soundtrack it by popping Black Brass into your Walkman. Four dirges of crushing metaphysical intensity await.”




--Ryan Masteller