Beyond the questions and themes raised by the spoken words and lyrical fragments on this EP, there is a broader question that faces the listener. Where, it prompts us to muse, does music end and cacophony begin? What demarcations keep art and noise apart? Where do song and sonorousness meet, and who gets to impose such boundaries? It might seem like an obvious question, but where you draw the line determines what we get to call music and what remains the sonic barbarians at the creative gates.
But beyond my pseudo-intellectual and laboured philosophical musings, The Shadows of Alienation is also an intriguing sonic prospect, one that blends harsh sonics with poetic spoken word, sounds that feel like the soundtrack to the beauty of decay and harsh, apocalyptic artistry.
If opener ‘Perennial Despondency (Intro)’ gently builds the tones and textures of the background sonic colours (which, to be fair, are already fairly dark), it is ‘Perils of the Flesh’ which gives us a glimpse of the broad and brutalist spectrum being explored. Industrial rhythms gnash and gnaw, beguiling sonic shadows dance in the background, and a searing blast of dissonance and disharmony cuts swathes through the core. Not quite the opposite of music, but certainly an anagram of it!
The lyrics feel like a modern-day slice of Poe -eticism: stygian, anguished, and doomed, perfectly suited to the dystopian anti-melodies they dance over and drive through.
‘Locust of Control’ takes such discord to an extreme noise-as-sonic-art place – intense, blistering and agonising, music only in the same way that white noise is, but through their creation, a deliberate act of sonic rebellion.
Whether you see the final track, a cover of Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ as being a more conventional way to round things up depends on which direction of travel you are pursuing – more song like than what has gone before but still far from the conventional or most existing fans of the song, the sound of Scott Walker being ground down for spare parts, or an abandoned car plant trying to invent music but lyrically a brilliant addition to the themes of disenfranchisment and alienation that has run through the EP.
Boundaries are there to be pushed. Beyond those boundaries are others, liminal spaces that warp and weird-out music between regular genres and conventions, and beyond that is something where music and melody are subsummed by, well, the almost indescribable. (And god, have I tried my utmost to describe it.) Find your way to that place, and you may see Spectrum of Disorder in the distance, heading off into dimensions unknown and making a soundtrack for such a place as they go!
Okay, this might not be for everyone, but then what music is? That being the case, why not push things to extremes and see what happens?
