Zero Times Everything - 2021 - Sound Of Music

(135:00; Skrymir)

When a band goes to the effort of releasing an album which is more than two hours long in a nice double digipak sleeve with an informative booklet then one knows they mean business, and no-one is going to be in the alps singing gently. The core musicians are Tony Geballe (Electric Guitar, Rhythm Programming, Synths), Pietro Russino (Electric & Acoustic Guitar, Electric Violin, Rhythm Programming) and Richard Sylvarnes (Analog & Digital Synths, Kaoss Pads, Vocals, Electric Guitar & Bass, Rhythm Programming) and there is the feeling throughout that the album was an experiment in sonics as opposed to being an exercise in creating music which people would want to play. When looking through the booklet one realizes Markus Reuter was a guest and came up with the idea of using maths as a way of defining the chord structure for one song while the band agreed and then brought in a roulette wheel to make it a little more random.

This is avant garde taken to a new area, and while there is no doubt that everyone involved (there are also various guests) are very clever indeed at what they do, this does not necessarily equate to something I want to listen to repeatedly. This does not feel organic, but something which has been grown in a petri dish in a sterile lab as opposed to people bouncing ideas off one another. In many ways it feels like the humanity has been removed from much of the process and in the end we are left with something which is sterile. That it is complex and innovative is never in doubt, and I can fully appreciate everything which went into the making of it. Wanting to 135 minutes of this for pleasure time and again is another matter altogether.

Kev Rowland, February 2023

Links:
https://www.zerotimeseverything.com/
https://skrymir.bandcamp.com/