X-NAVI:ET - Dead City Voice

X-NAVI:ET is Rafal Iwanski, a sound artist, percussionist, and ethnologist. He describes his music as electro-acoustic, which, as one could imagine, is a lot of instrumental tracks with few sample uses. Now, as far as musical background goes, he also has partaken in acts such as HATI, a sort of experimental, sort of audiovisual project that uses regular instruments, as well as hand made objects. He also performs in another act, Voices of the Cosmos, making space-drone-ambient tracks (that's a mouthful to say). But, to shorten this whole paragraph up, this man has been in a few acts so he knows what he's doing.

This release comes from 2013, and is titled Dead City Voice. Where the album themes begin is definitely a subject that's been explored before. Walking through the giant, mountainous buildings and running amok through hundreds of people through each and every street you stumble upon, the city holds a tremendous amount of excitement to behold. Through the shape, sounds, and clutter of the city, or any city by that matter, the artist wanted to implement sound, a interpretation of what the common man sees in the city.

And, through those two wonderful appendages that you find on the side of your head, you can now hear this creepy, alas well done work of art. To start off, we have a song whose title will make any math teacher cringe, and that song is 1 + 1 = 1. A decent drone song with what sounds like alarms, or possibly even the honking of horns passing through it, takes place to begin our journey into the hallowed halls of the industrial complex.

Mutegenocideecadentia is a pretty creepy track on its own. With some samples flowing through the background that sound like they come out of a radio from the 50s, and the layers on top providing a sort of melancholy tune to it, this track stuck in my head for quite a while.

Schism continued on with the drone sound, and it did what most drone songs fail to do; and that's keep the main synth moving, changing, and not clinging onto one sound for too long. Though well done, it still was less intriguing than the previous songs.

Tinnitus Auris came along next with some nice little chimes and another noise in the background that gave it a bit of a noisey feel. The bass soon came along with the song to amplify it, but the constant repeating and looping sounds within it just didn't sit too well with me.

Thankfully, Garden Paradox fixed that rightfully well, and moved into a darker descent. A deep pitched line procured out all sorts of odd sounds, some even sounding like they belonged in a sci-fi realm. The last song on the album, Luna 369 Park, though it might be nice for relaxing or even studying, was one of the worse songs. Drone in nature, but lacking creativity and anything special to really push it to a better position, this song fell flat.

However, all in all, I liked my stay in the city. Weird and odd, but creative and unique is the way to really describe what I heard on this album. Some songs got stale and sounded too much the same as multiple other compositions I've heard in the past, but when the tracks really went into odd territory, this album succeeded very well. Plus, if you like this enough, you can nab yourself a really interesting deluxe edition of this LP. Jul 02 2014