Ilios - Love Is My Motor

Antifrost
Afro2038

You search in vain for aural references to Frankie Valli. Not the regular procedure for most new music releases I daresay, but what with the eight tracks herein titled with one line each from “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You”, you could be excused.

But no, this strong recording consists of processed field recordings (captured in various sites on South America and Europe), with a dab of Nikos Veliotis’ cello on one track, that whir and seep, mass and disperse in patterns that often, indeed, have a string-like quality to them. “Pardon the way that I stare” insinuates itself with a high hum and a sound like distant remote-controlled toy airplanes or a chainsaw across the valley before more dulcet tones eddy into view, gently swirling, wafting toward the ground. It bleeds into the next piece (I’ll let you sing the titles yourself), the tones increasing in intensity, approximating the eerie howl of night predators, still with the downward drift they had originally before shifting to a raspier, more disturbed area. It’s all been very quiet so far, even if the initial serenity is beginning to give way, but suddenly there’s a loud, low thrum that lingers in mutating guises for several minutes (my favorite portion of the disc, actually) presaging an ear-splitting blast of static (listeners with less than sympathetic spouses to this sort of thing might wish to lower the volume in advance; you can thank me for saving your marriages later) that, erm, certainly lets you “know that it’s real”.

Having successfully scoured our auricular canals, Ilios allows his sound to open up a bit, moving into large interior spaces echoing with indecipherable chatter and engine noise. The first seven tracks, comprising about two thirds of the disc, thus form a powerful, bracing suite of sorts, giving one a real sense of having traveled from the chilly mountaintop, through the acidic haze to “civilization”. I might have preferred things ended here, the final piece not amassing quite the same head of steam, though not at all bad in and of itself, an extremely quiet meditation that at times submerges out of the range of non-hyper-attentive hearing.

Better than anything I’ve ever heard by The Four Seasons, well worth checking out.

antifrost