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Flint Glass
Circumsounds

Tympanik Audio / Brume Records

Posted: Friday, October 10, 2008
By: Ilker Yücel
Editor

Brume Records artist Flint Glass - actually a pseudonym for French musician Gwenn Trémorin - has already gained notoriety in the post-industrial and experimental electronic scene with two critically acclaimed albums. With Circumsounds, he presents an album that features a collection of his best remixes for other artists, not only sharing the limelight with his peers but also showcasing the range of his abilities. To listen to the record from beginning to end, one will notice the flow between tracks, carrying the listener through peaks and valleys of noisy beats and haunting ambiences. While this might not sound impressive by itself, it's interesting on this particular release as the cavernous symphonic swells and steadily creeping marches of distorted drums in Polygon's "Gestern" seep ever so subtly into the despairing melodies, insectoid electronics, and monstrous tribal energies of "Plenum Aquae" by Thermidor; two different artists brought together into a cohesive thematic construct. This continues throughout the record as Zonk't's "Air Field" presents a sparse array of glitches and subdued electronic blips gradually building to some rather catchy IDM rhythms, and Empusae's "Beauty of Decay" in which fractured samples flutter amid an abysmal drone giving way to a series of conservative but effective breakbeats and growls of deep bass. The same can be said "Fueled" by Displacer as oscillating synths quiver into a frenzy of industrialized IDM. It's all decidedly electro, but possessing the scope of classical music, creating the intimations of some grim or beastly presence, suitable for any dark ambient horror film soundtrack. Another notable track is the remix of "Sacred Truth" by Disharmony, which has a distinct Skinny Puppy flavor with ghastly vocals so similar to Nivek Ogre slashing abstractly across an array of fluctuating drumbeats and flashes of seemingly random noise. Where most remix collections would probably suffer from the same sense of confused schizophrenia as a regular compilation, with tracks by different artists moving casually through divergent styles with a minimal amount of solidity among them, Flint Glass manages on Circumsounds to bring together these different artists into a unified package thanks to his distinct stamp as a remixer. Without hearing the originals, one might be inclined to accept this album as Glass' own compositions, and while it doesn't break any new ground in the field of cross-genre post-industrial that is steadily becoming more prevalent in the underground electronic music scene, it does at least demonstrate the skills of a very fine artist who is at the very least making a positive contribution.