Ensemble 1 – Delay Works
Ensemble 1 – Delay Works
Halfmeltedbrain Records
Release Date: 01/12/23
Running Time: 50:38
Review by Dark Juan
7/10
Having been a whiz with words for some time now, I took the opportunity to see just how many words about Metal and Extreme music I have actually managed to have published over the five or six years I have been talking about records and occasionally interviewing very famous people and being a disgusting fangirl and fawning all over them. Trevor Strnad (RIP) and Madeleine Liljestam are not likely to forget the horrors of a full-on Dark Juan charm offensive. Well, to be fair, Trevor probably has by now. Unless it haunts him from beyond the grave, which is not beyond the realms of possibility. Neither are any young ladies to whom I take a shine. Anyway, I counted every word I have written about the One True Faith (mainly because I have an ego the size of a medium sized star system and save every word I write. My memoirs won’t write themselves and I’ll need background information) and it turns out I have written over half a million words about Metal. 500,000 words plus. If that doesn’t prove my fucking allegiance to the music I love, I don’t know what will.
There is a point to this blowing smoke up my own arse – I got into a disagreement with some wanker on the internet about Metal. This arsehole mouth-breather was of the opinion that, because I don’t spend pretty much all my (pitifully small; unwell wife and single income household) disposable income on band merchandise and physical releases rather than like, food or fuel, then I, Dark fucking Juan, the High Priest of Extremity, was accused of not being a true Metal fan.
This did not go well for the fat fucking Neanderthal Septic neckbeard still hiding in his mother’s basement. He didn’t even know who holds the world record for the loudest gig ever. He didn’t know about KISS’s “The Elder”. He didn’t know anything about the Morrisound era of Death Metal. He thought Chris Barnes sounded good on the last Six Feet Under album. He thought Slipknot are heavy. He had no fucking idea who Sarcofago, or Anaal Nathrakh, or Sodom or Owydwr are.
Now, Dark Juan is not a gatekeeper, and Dark Juan is also a pretty inclusive chap who believes that everyone’s opinion is valid, until it is wrong. What Dark Juan will not abide is some fuckpig telling him that I am not a Defender of The Faith. Dark Juan is happy to talk about music and have his opinions challenged and to always learn something new or interesting, as long as the discussion is respectful and sensible, but I will not abide is TWATS attempting to bully, gatekeep or otherwise tarnish my commitment to Extreme music by being a fucking cunt about it.
May the wankbastard be afflicted by crabs and not have a spare hand to scratch.
Sorry.
The Platter Of Splatter ™ is spinning. There is a record upon it. That record is by Ensemble 1, and it is entitled “Delay Works”, and it is the triumph of minimalism over anything else.
The opening track of the three (lengthy) pieces on offer today is called ‘Distorted Fades’ and lasts a mere nine minutes and fifty-two seconds. A chunky central bit of chugging is slowly added to, with layer after layer of guitar and increasingly complex rhythms until there is a colossal, coruscating wall of sound pummelling your meat computer into some kind of viscid, quivering jelly. It does beggar the question though – is it Metal?
The answer is no. Although it is heavy as fuck, this opening cut, it is the triumph of delay and looping over everything else. There is no real song structure – it does not follow the verse-chorus-verse framework of song construction. Instead, it is a modern piece of Noise Rock that is curiously hypnotic as it constantly repeats and twists in upon itself in ever-more complicated loops and whorls. To quote the band themselves: “’Distorted Fades’ is built from a basic musical phrase being displaced against itself in a series of rhythmical changes, and utilises timbral variations and dynamic swells alongside
various techniques such as pick scrapes, amplified cymbals and palm mute/open string alterations to create structure.”
Dark Juan is not a musician and has no idea what that means. All I do is write about it. All I can tell you is that it is a piece of work that takes a simple bit of palm muting and turns it into something complex and bewitching.
That’s the short tune out of the way. The next offering to cudgel my brains into some form of descriptive writing about a genre I know next to nothing about is ‘Drums & Delay Loops’. This piece of music lasts for around sixteen minutes and uses similar techniques to the first tune, but the drums are almost the lead instrument here, whereas drum rudiments are transposed to the guitar and are overlaid with ever more complexity with delay loops added and subtracted throughout the piece. It’s an almost geometric pattern that is formed with music – as if an alien race were trying to contact and communicate through experimentation with sound. You can easily imagine fractal patterns forming and decaying as the music progresses and the colour of them changing as the pitch and timbre does. The accompanying blurb to this album also mentions long-form register traversal, but Dark Juan doesn’t know what that means. The thing is, is that I can’t be a bastard about it because this hyper-technical duo has Dark Juan absolutely smeared across the nearest wall in the intelligence stakes. All I know is that so far, “Delay Works” is a phenomenally challenging listen.
I’m really not doing too well at describing the indescribable, am I? I have no idea where to place Ensemble 1 in the great pantheon of Extreme music. No-one can deny that they are an incredibly extreme band, but not with heaviness. Their sheer, bloody-minded vision doesn’t create songs. It creates huge, glittering soundscapes that are shiny and clean and futuristic and streamlined and polished to such a shine that they melt things when sunlight shines directly on them. They are hundreds of metres of pristine white concrete over which endless armies of impeccably turned-out troops march in perfect synchronicity. They are the sound of super-advanced quantum computers solving tens of billions of calculations in picoseconds and discovering that humanity is a problem to be managed through selective culling. They are sharp and angular and dangerous as they charm and seduce with a poisoned knife behind their back. They are normal looking people with wet-wired muscle enhancements and incredibly highly boosted onboard combat systems with automatic targeting and downloaded expertise in weapons handling and utilisation.
Dark Juan is not normally lost for words, but Ensemble 1 might have actually done it. The third track is ‘Submerged Harmonics’ which is a solo work for the bass guitar and lasts a mere twenty-two minutes plus. More longform looping and phrase displacement techniques are the order of the day here, and it is a strange work that really does have the feel of a bell being tolled underwater – it is thick and somehow applies pressure to the listener. I don’t know how to quantify this…
Well, that rant at the start of this review, compared to the music that I have experienced, has made me think and make no mistake. Do I prefer the certainty and sameness of Metal, which does have a certain structure and feel, or do I plunge into endless, freeform soundscapes that are a journey every time you listen? Do I want sanity or to be driven to inner spaces that I have never before visited?
Thanks to Ensemble 1 I am no longer sure.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System doesn’t know what to do with itself as far as Ensemble 1 is concerned. Did I enjoy the record? I simply don’t know. I admire the subtleties and hyper-focused attention to detail the band have, but a purely visceral gut feeling that I have is that Ensemble 1 are a bit too clever for their own good. I award this record 7/10 because the music is just too esoteric for a wide audience and even someone who is willing to be mightily challenged would have to be in the mood for this recording, and Dark Juan can’t see that being very often.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Distorted Fades
02. Drums & Delay Loops
03. Submerged Harmonics
LINE-UP:
Joe Potts – Guitar (Tracks 1, 2)
Tom Way – Drums (Tracks 1, 2), Bass guitar (Track 3)
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of said party. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
