John Matthias & Jay Auborn - Race To Zero [Village Green Record 013 Promo]

Released in early June via Village Green Recording as the labels cat.no. 013 is "Race To Zero", the new collaborational album effort put on the circuit by fellow composers John Matthias and Jay Auborn. Based on a series of acoustic improvisations recorded in places as different as a 700 year old chapel in Devon as well as an Icelandic basement studio the pair led these recordings through a massive amount of digital DAW reverbs and other digital devices, maxing out processor capacities at will, creating error sequences and abusing these outcomes further until the nine tracks of the longplay piece finally had taken shape. The opener is "Actress", a surprisingly calm Ambient piece accompanied by steady, muffled drum hits and a beautiful, yet slightly out of tune acoustic topping as well as a panoramic string section, "Pretoria" caters a brooding, ritualistic and well mystic vibe for dark deep forest rituals, the "Caretaker" serves minor piano chords and a sizzling background atmosphere whilst the "Wax Heart" consists of rich cosmic influenced synth spirals, cinematic horn sections and heavy ProgRock-influenced drums - a combination that brings nothing but impressive grandiosity to the sonic table. With "Stone Face" John Matthias and Jay Auborn enter a realm of more fustian DarkJazz / TripHop mixed up with killer military snare rolls and multilayered instruments before coming to a sudden halt, the "Tilted Stage" is quite a turbulent place turning a tender piano intro upside down, adding highly emotional strings, harsh Industrial Electronics beatwise as well as terrifyingly dark, distorted and threatening synths before "Every Word Is A Mask" serves more scores'que and masterly arranged Downtempo vibes with an orchestral twist. Furthermore we've got "Soma Vapour", a quite loop-orientated piece with a mechanical attitude covered in layers and layers of hypersweet, kitsch-dripping melodies whereas the final "Songbird" maxes out melancholia levels over a 7 minutes stretch and makes up a perfect tune for a rainy November afternoon. Lovely.