“Debris is a great mixture of vintage ['ramp] and this ambient one of the Doombient series”
1 Rails 4:35 2 Skeletarl 13:50 3 Girders 2:30 4 Wreckage 4:20 5 Pieces 5:08 6 Debris 7:08 7 Coventried 4:19 8 Hamburgised 5:32 9 Dresdened 2:54 10 Bridges 8:35 11 Slow Corrosion 13:52 12 Residual Oxide 3:26 DOOMBIENT.MUSIC (CD 76:08)
(Dark ambient, Berlin School) (V.F.)
A heavy corrosive wave envelops the introduction of Rails, whose wheels send an ocher vapor spreading a strange cosmic aura in an industrial universe. Recorded in the turmoil of a stormy separation with the other half of ['ramp']; Frank Makowski, DEBRIS will have taken almost 3 years to see the light of day. The result is an album that combines the obscure heaviness of ['ramp] with stormy sequencer movements that are surprisingly violent after a series of ambient albums by the German duo.
Following the strikes of wheels of Rails, which ends its road in metallic percussions, Skeletarl gropes its way through into oozing darkness with a line of arrhythmic bass. An explosion of sound violence is coming. She is latent and vociferous with spectral murmurs and fluttering percussions scattered over a hesitant movement of rhythm, as in a roller coaster struggling to pull its carts. With its corrosive reverberations and its industrial environment, Skeletarl plunges us into a heavy and violent universe where resonances eat up the eardrums on a strangely vague rhythm whose essence is drawn from the dark depths of Redshift. This title perfectly depicts the harsh and metallic atmosphere that dominates this last release of ['ramp] with its sinuous movement that sneak through the meanders of lifeless lanes while chewing the walls of metal sheet of its sharp claws to feed itself of twisted and screaming metal. From Girders to Residual Oxide, ['ramp] passes through all the underground levels to offer a carnage sound, sometimes static and sometimes animated by a sequenced rhythm, whose throbbing curves are swallowed by the terrifying passages of a dilapidated factory. It's ['ramp'], but it's also Stephen Parsick who likes humid concrete atmospheres. A Stephen Parsick who also exploits sequencer movements of an exhilarating heaviness and equivalent speed as on Wreckage where the drum is rolling on barrels of contaminated oil and get intermingle with a sound universe stripping of screaming sequences. Sequences that get melt with the sizzled light of Pieces to continue pulsing in a drifting industrial world before sliding on the ball bearings of the title-track that simply pulls the metal out of sliding towers before the heaviness of Coventried and Hamburgised are completing the demolition work. Cast in hardened steel and in one long segmented piece of 12 tracks, DEBRIS offers few ambient moments. These moments of tranquility can be found in Dresdened and its long, atonal breaths which are circulating among debris in a factory yard. Although heavy and incredibly sinister, Slow Corrosion hiccups of its heavy sequences whose random migrations pulsate heavily under metallized percussions that flutter on the spot. Its movement is as sinister as Skeletarl but doesn't explode and retains the oscillatory linearity of a large hungry turtle ruminating on its appetite until the last caustic puffs of Residual Oxide.
DEBRIS is quite a revelation. While we had become accustomed to the placid universes of the Doombient series, this album without Frank Makowski arrives with its big hooves and smashed out the Doombient's cold and caustic frame. And in the end, it's as close to Redshift that the work of a single musician can allow it in a sublime mixture of the two worlds. Stephen Parsick subtly and skilfully molds his effects of metallic and caustic reverberations into sequences with heavy resonances that literally make melt the last vestiges of the Doombient series. It's a must for fans of ['ramp'], of Dark Ambient and of Berlin School.
Sylvain Lupari (November 2nd, 2009) *****
Available at [´ramp] Bandcamp