Music Review #2: Sp3ct3rs

It's been nearly four months since my last blog because real-world stuff has unfortunately occupied my time. But I felt it was time to put imaginary pen to unreal paper again with a music review. This review is of an artist who releases interesting aural journeys under the name Sp3ct3rs, known to many of us as Jim Wylde, and his self-titled album.

There are thirteen tracks on the album. Jim described the album as "an album about fragmented selves... about how we survive the darkness of others and our own demons." And he's not wrong! It is an album of dark, drifting music. Something to listen to with the lights off so it inhabits the room and your mind. Good music for introspection although it may take you to dark places, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing as the darkness is part of who we are. Confront your demons and accept your fragmented nature.

It is music that walks on the edge of the subconscious and lets you view the emptiness on the other side. Although with a casual listen it could seem that there is not much going on with a more concentrated listen there are deeper things at work in the music. Layers of almost subliminal sound that threaten to reveal themselves fully but don't. An album for dark soul-searching.

Track one is Gates. A quietly drifting drone piece which summoned up images of floating in a void, stuck in a nowhere-place with no distractions and nothing to do except contemplate the fading reality of your own consciousness.

Track two is City of Self. Walking around the shattered architecture of your own mind. Unsure of what lies around the corners. A landscape of bleak ruins of distorted memories and a mournful wind blowing those memories away.

Track three is Inverted Crown. This is the former engine-room of your mind. Organic machinery slowly winding down. Muted pulses of failed messages. The system struggling to stay operational. The sound of blood pumping around a wrecked body.

Track four is White Wax Wings. The storehouse of old dreams and desires trying to take flight with clipped wings. A plaintive cry of ideas wanting to be heard in a tumultuous world, lost in the cacophony of howling silence of the darkness which exists in all of us.

Track five is Broken in Turns. The irrevocable realisation that life isn't what we think it is. Alarmed at the thought that world doesn't work the way we want it to. The mind rebels at the idea sending anguished signals to us.

Track six is Falling. With the understanding of our place in the the dark, unaware universe we feel as if we are losing control. Falling down a well of mutating blackness while the mind shrieks at us.

Track seven is Wake of Voices. From the dark recesses of our diseased mind come echoes of all those voices that are us. Our different personalities whispering to us, one dominant then slipping back into the muted wash of our subconscious.

Track eight is Absence Unfolds. The stark reality that there is nothing. That beyond our mind exists only a void threatening to engulf us. The sound of the abysmal nothingness slowing encroaching on our thoughts and very being.

Track nine is She. The Siren that exists in our innermost subconscious. She weaves her songs that we barely register yet they work away at our conscious mind trying to ensnare us. She haunts our every moment with her seductive singing.

Track ten is The Magic of Nothing. The world spins its spell and entices us with promises of sex, wealth and power but behind the facade is barren emptiness. The reality that all the trappings of materialism fade away and are scattered like dust in the wind of the void which is the ultimate reality.

Track eleven is Fragmented. Our true nature. Fragments of past experiences and other people's dreams and expectations interwoven until we think we know who we are. The myth of self. We are shaped by the outside world and our inner selves forge that into disjointed nightmares of delusion.

Track twelve is Veins. The subconscious thoughts that flow through our mind on the edges of the veins of consciousness. Subliminal messages from out of time. The blare of our motor functions demanding attention.

Track thirteen is Towers. The structures we erect in our mind to store our memories and experiences. But in the dark hours of the night they move from room to room, mating with each other to produce hideous offspring that show us non-realities and pseudo-memories.