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