To colonize, one must claim ownership over a
property. Alocasia Garden, aka Reece Thomas Green of Folkstone, UK, visualizes
the machinations of the colonizer through proto-industrial sound, its arrival
and assimilation of space and/or population a tense inevitability in the
composer’s hands. What’s colonized? Who’s colonizing? I can’t get enormous
interstellar vessels out of my head, massive hulks moving from planet to
planet. I also can’t shake the idea of European colonization, a real, terrible
actuality that has shaped and continues to shape our world today. Maybe the
former is a sci-fi metaphor for the latter (well, it certainly is), but either
way, Alocasia Garden’s treatment of its ideas is as unsettling as it is
thrilling. Piercing metallic tones reveal the intentions of Green’s subjects,
and most of it’s not good. Rumbles of heavy, thudding progress fill the
atmosphere, and forward movement occurs in an inexorable tide of struggle and
vanity. Consider song titles too – “Consumed by Struggle,” “Allegory of
Vanity,” and ones I haven’t referenced, like “Verity” and “Purge,” all ideas
pointing to the ends of eras and the beginnings of new, and not exactly
welcome, ruling entities. Weighty material indeed! Fortunately, Green guides us
through the album like an author, scenes appearing and stories progressing
toward their finalities. It all makes me wonder what sort of grasp he has on
the English language – could there be a novel in there somewhere? I ask myself that
question all the time. Sadly, I don’t have much musical skill anymore to fall
back on when the words don’t come. Good thing I know how to listen to tapes!
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