Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words - 11 Instances of Dead Letters + Words
(Ideal)
Like Graham Parker's 12 Haunted Episodes, the title of the second album from this apocaliptic ambient project from Göteborg, Sweden that is the brainchild of a very disturbed individual by the name of Thomas Ekelund is both descriptive and functional. There are, indeed, 11 tracks ("instances") of Ekelund's "dead letters + words." His background in various punk, noise and shoegazing projects serves him well on this collection of sonic explorations of the world collapsing under the weight of its own chaos and decay. Ekelund paints bleak images of barren landscapes, collapsing buildings (new and otherwise), and empty streets with sounds that are as harsh and brutal as a shard of glass to the jugular.
The distorted drone of "Tell Laura I Love Her" (definitely NOT the old Ray Peterson hit) melds into "Realign, Then Fall," a looping found sound that closely approximates Ekelund shuffling, signing and stamping a collection of papers (that may or not include a suicide note). "A List of Things" may be the sound of Ekelund swinging by his neck from a creaking branch and "The Hills Are Alive" is a heavily treated guitar drone and a metalic, throbbing, creeping mass of pain akin to The Cure's Carnage Visors or a Joy Division funeral dirge from side two of Closer slowed down to the wrong speed.
To lighten the proceedings a bit, I challenge anyone to identify the found sounds and field recordings that make up "Settling Dust." A piano ruminates in an empty room, again similar to Joy Division's "Decades" under Ekelund's shuffling, sniffling, gasping suvivor of a nuclear holocaust. A sad, pessimistic, experimental recording offering little hope to a futile world hellbent on destroying itself.
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