Something a bit different for this week. Though I usually tend to focus writing about full length records for my reviews as opposed to singles, or even EP's, I'm always happy to travel a bit outside of my comfort zone when the right opportunity presents itself, and in the case of Berlin audiovisual artist Robert Heel's newest outing, the argument couldn't be more compelling; In just ten and a half minutes, or just long enough to fit on a single side of a 12'' record, the towering, tape saturated drones of Unant evoke more emotional depth and atmospheric weight than most full length albums can over the course of an entire hour, proving that there is very little correlation between the length and format of a record and it's ability to carry its listeners on a journey that, while brief, still feels fully formed and no less satisfactory.
Having started off in video and audiovisual production before deciding to focus on sound as a primary medium, Robert Heel's music contains an undeniable sense of narrative, and an urgency not often found in ambient music that carries the piece like the ebb's and flow's of some dark, existential hero's journey (or in this case, villain's journey might be more appropriate) into the very heart of darkness. Described by the artist as "A soundtrack to a dark night where plundering desperados wander around spreading devastation and unsettledness", the music shimmers like desert air, the album art a snapshot of the desperation and frontier callousness of our long forgotten past that brings to mind the casual cruelties of Cormac Mccarthy's Blood Meridian, a tortured vision of human atrocity and the moral compromise of man amidst a backdrop of blisteringly dry desert and looming mountain ranges.
Opening with the ghostly, dampened buzz of cicada's singing from somewhere deep in the shadows, a swirling static begins to emerge like some smokey, spectral beacon, drifting from the protective glow of a campfire, the only hint of life — or protection for that matter — amidst the impenetrable darkness of an already unfamiliar and unforgiving landscape. As the atmosphere begins to grow, so too does a tangible sense of tension, an inevitable dread that slowly builds and consumes with the choking, black smoke of torched villages, left in the wake of cruel men who circle the weak like carrion birds. Synthesizers processed through the warm degradation of reel-to-reel tape effects ripple mid-air, distorted and mirage-like under an oppressive heat.
Throughout it's deceivingly short run-time, Unant seems to render time meaningless, a malleable thing that can stretch endlessly like the feverish grips of a peyote trip. As textures blur together and individual timbres and textures begin to lose their clarity, we are reminded that everything is malleable — even our own morals— and that like all things, a compass can be smashed to pieces and packed away forever.