Monolith Cocktail Blog

ALBUM REVIEW BY ANDREW C. KIDD

Colin Dyer ’47ram Negativ65′
(Schematic Music Company)

Colin Dyer’s music is multidimensional. In 2020, he released the cryptic Cypher (the tracks are written in Morse code) – imagine an Iannis Xenakis composition tapped slowly through a war-time telegraph. Then there is the inexplicably meditative Vector Caliente, released in 2022. His 30-track The Cyberneticist, published in the same year, is finely crafted musical fantascience. Listen to tracks such as rest Tybie technic which imbue the sonic strangeness of earliest Ross 154 on the Eevo Lute Muzique label, and the twenty-six track – Bettie recti synch 2 – which is like a condensed Knowledge Through Science by Richard H. Kirk. His latest release on the Schematic Music Company label is titled 47ram Negativ65.

Zap! The zither-like boings and laser effects on the opening track Ph6Fenix scan across the listener’s aural frequencies, splitting all in its atonal path. This is cold futurism. The hit-hat deconstruction is clever. The reverberating two-key melody is eventually hauled back from the ashes as its title perhaps alludes to. It is not entirely dissonant; the otherworldly vacillating synthesiser melody on Ph6Fenix imbues a calm neutrality, serving to soften the sound. The rhythm is coppery – it is slowly oxidised by the vocals. damb loop is scalene, a triangle with unequal measure. The steely synthesisers scythe away until their breakdown in the final third. The track tailspins around in dysrhythmic chaos until Dyer eventually resuscitates the original melody – perhaps he could have progressed the sound a little further at this point? Either way, damb loop is zoopraxiscopic: a one-reeler.

Various intelligent dance music artists are referenced in the accompanying press release: Autechre, Dopplereffekt, Unit Moebius / Bunker Records, et cetera. probability acid is the closest that Dyer comes to the experimental idiosyncrasies of these stalwarts. Ultimately, he achieves a Yevgeny Zamyatin-like dystopia: glassy, repetitive – numeric. “Every billionaire on this planet is a parasiiiiite”, announces the vocalist on 7061726173697465. From the politically rouge origins to the militaristic two-set rhythm, it is a metaphor for the hard-knuckled fist of authoritarianism. Unlike the other tracks, its sound is contained. It does not expand exponentially; rather, it remains quietly amelodic, and brutal. Dyer is no stranger to Morse code (remember Cypher) – the Morse code translation of 6opC68ance is -…. — .–. -.-. -…. —.. .- -. -.-. . Multiple frequencies are sent out like this in quick-fire volleys to disorientate the listener.

Dyer’s scholastic achievement on 47ram Negativ65 is his effective use of xenharmonic scales: the claustrophobic pitching heightens the overarching theme of oppression. In equal measure are the moments of sonic elevation akin to the hyper-intelligence of a Poul Anderson novel. Admittedly, it does border on being unchanging at times, but so be it given its inaesthetic dystopian theme. If there is any respite from the dissonance and microtonality, it is listening to Dyer’s dexterity in compositional form.