It often seems like Francisco Lopez releases an album (or single, or file) a week — just attempting to keep up with the man's output is foolhardy at best. The fact that his music covers such a enormous gulf of sounds, style-wise, doesn't help matters; at what point does one jump in to the vast Lopez pool?
After 2009's glut of activity, including a box set of early, unreleased works (some of his best material, in this humble writer's opinion), the uninitiated could hardly go wrong investing their time and energy in this 40-minute opus, recorded in New Zealand. Like most of Lopez's work, this one comes with minimal info and the usual black design adorning booklet and tray card. One at least can't argue with Lopez's consistent m.o. — his decision to render the artwork surrounding his release's colorless (black, as in nondescript, or simply clear or no packaging at all, which connotes similar meanings) mandates you focus your attention solely on his organized sounds; the length of most of his works also appears intentional, as they often take their methodical time developing, engaging and challenging the listener on any variety of conscious/subconscious levels.
Lopez has trucked in brackish throngs of noise before (which, again, buttresses his blackened presentations), via aberrations of processed black metal or sheer digital immolation. Here he forges his own particular strain of "industrial" music, though hardly of the EBM or Throbbing Gristle type. Beginning with a massed choir of factory irruptions, the piece gradually chugs and churns its way to a sudden cessation of activities; it would be jarring if Lopez were not the canny composer. At roughly 16 minutes in, all movement seems to be directed inward, quietness assumes a stronghold for a small spell, but its time is short-lived. Eventually, the morass of vibrating steel, an orchestrated canvas of vast hydraulics, hissing pistons, escaping steam and sundry other seemingly man-made (or robotic) contraptions vie for attention. At roughly 35 minutes, the whole enterprise powers down, and all is but ebb and decay. It makes for an utterly spellbinding experience; the mechanistic blur of Lopez's imagination and software ushers in a formidable new industrial music at once aged and ageless.
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Darren Bergstein 2010-02-13
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