Sacred Bones Records (label)
28 February 2021 (released)
28 February 2021
Blanck Mass is Benjamin John Power.
Benjamin John Power is also in noisenik duo Fuck Buttons with Andrew Hung, currently filed under Project Dormant.
‘In Fernaeux’ is Benjamin John Power’s double-sided sonic declaration/exclamation/proclamation follow-up to 2019’s ‘Animation Violence Mild’.
Using the ‘time’ since March 2020 to trawl, recall what it was like to roam freely and utilise the memory documents gathered along the way.
‘In Fernaeux’ is also an audio-reconstruction of the innermost thoughts and the uppermost feelings of pain: emotional, physical, psychical, spiritual. These sonic soliloquies (careening from calming poise to ear-slitting white noise) embody the expressions of the eternal and internal inferno, the burning spirit within striving to get out.
A Motherlode of other-load, it (re)assembles and blends years of acquired field recordings and physical space surround-sounds with technotonic tweaks and twirks. Atmospheric-ambience replete with the resonances of life, movement and sensory triggers.
After a year of mentally scarring lock-ins and cathartic black-outs, the absence of human wordsong amongst company, the chatter of the pub hubbub, even in what Power calls the ‘consumerist agenda of new experiences’, the citadels of cheap commerce at least offering human activity.
The voices in the head sometimes need an audience.
Phase 1: the first six minutes is a pacey-spacey synthesised sojourn in the vein of Tangerine Dream. Repressed, suppressed oppressive emotions coming to the fore in a prog-rock wordless (sh)out-rage.
This becomes a droning-moaning head-zoning episode, a flat-lining pulse that steadies and readies itself for an somnambient dream-wash. Eno’s what he’s doing …
Phase II: Commences with a cacophonic clashing of crunching chaos. The noise dissipates and the sermonising of a street preacher enters the fray. Proffering spiritual advice on the transcendental properties of a blessing, the divine power that (p)resides internally offering a secular-molecular realignment of the soul. Amen, to all.
The album closes with a soothing piano coda, the culmination of an eventful ‘journey’ through time and place.
As a means of memory-delving and brain-debris clearing this is one way of banishing embedded ghosts and spring-cleaning the psyche.
