Altered Zones

Last year, Fuck Buttons' Benjamin John Power recorded an LP's worth of gently unfolding ambience in his apartment in London under solo moniker Blanck Mass. Inspired by "the beautiful complexity of the natural world" and "cerebral hypoxia"-- or the loss of oxygen to the brain -- his debut full-length offering on Mogwai's Rock Action imprint toes a fine and heartbreaking line between the ecstatic and the elegiac. Album cut "Icke's Struggle" combines some soupy synth wash with a far-off chorus of animal sounds and chirping birds. We might register it as the sound of burgeoning life if these visuals courtesy of Alex Turvey didn't make us think of the opposite process, with the slow disintegration of some tropical folliage under what appears to be a downpour of acid rain, but just might be a metaphor for hypoxia. Can't really get much heavier than that. -- Emilie Friedlander, Altered Zones

Blanck Mass LP drops June 21st in the US via Rock Action