Nodern: Nodern
Sub Rosa

There's a modicum of mystique surrounding this debut from Nodern as few details about the artist's 'real' identity are offered and the recording info that's included is likewise minimal. Here's what can be reported: the eponymous, 51-minute debut was created in Venice, London, and Johannesburg between 2002 and 2004; it's an often apocalyptically toned electronic travelogue that makes occasional stops at ambient, drone, noise, and industrial zones; and only three of the fifteen pieces exceed five minutes, making the album sometimes sound as if Nodern sliced and remodeled Autechre's epics into more digestible, three-minute hallucinations.

More specifically, interludes of varying character (everything from the stateliness of the pretty synth figures of “Thomas D Playing Synth” to the creepy menace of “Not Down That Alley” to the peacefulness of the coda “Crutch Receiver”) offer occasional respite from the brooding and apocalyptic ambiance pervading the album. In the noise drone overture “Nodern Loves You,” a fleeting profanity is drowned by cacophonous rumble before giving way to the synaptic beats and writhing themes of “The Meat in the Street.” “Lockerbroom Rumble” similarly escalates to a seething roar while grimy surges, poundings, and bangings overlay an insistent jittery groove in “Bleak Purple.” Voices punctuate the proceedings in a few pieces too, like “The Coal Mine Worker” where incoherent vocal fragments whisper over a blurry morphing base. Not surprisingly, some of the album's most memorable moments emerge in more developed pieces. The longer duration of “Letter Puncture PNX Pass,” for example, allows time for its banging rhythms and chattering synth banks to be slowly smothered by a dense droning mass that rises to an annihilating pitch before dropping out, leaving the polyrhythmic base to writhe ominously. Though Nodern may be derivative, it's also distinctive, especially in those moments when its creator furrows familiar territory in uncompromisingly dark manner.

June 2005