Brendan Murray/Seth Nehil - Sillage

Sedimental
SED CD049

“Sillage” is a good record though as greatly as I’ve enjoyed the prior solo work of the two musicians involved, I admit I was anticipating something more. Brendan Murray and Seth Nihil, both presumably wielding some combination of computers, electronics, field recordings etc. create a string of soundscapes that tend toward the steamy, a grimy industrial feeling that reeks of oil and ozone. They get to a certain modest level and pretty much stay there for the entire disc. It’s perfectly fine but for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on, it’s vaguely unsatisfying. There’s something of a thinness, maybe a little lack of commitment that keeps me at arm’s length.

The promotional material accompanying the disc speaks of its requiring “many, many listens and [it] can remain baffling and impenetrable”. Many listens are always a good thing, but I don’t find it so much impenetrable as a bit gray and unfocussed. Maybe it’s the overall evenness of it; I like a good steady state recording as much as the next guy but I don’t have the impression that that’s what the pair was after here, more that it was an alley they stumbled into, decided to investigate and perhaps overstayed. The seventh track (out of eight), “feet wrap around chair”, begins to interestingly grope for a way out, some loopy figures entering the scene in a slightly humorous manner, but things then settle down into the variegated hum and gentle clatter we’ve heard throughout the album. Again, it’s fairly enjoyable on its own, I just expected something of greater probity from these two. Or maybe I simply need more listens.

sedimental