DECAYCAST Reviews: Somnambulists “From the Field To The Factory” CS/DL (Zum, 2019)
Slow, morose guitars begin to dust the cobwebs off George Chen’s ZUM imprint with a fresh new ambient guitar release from Somnambulists “From the Field To The Factory” begins with lurking guitar drones casting subtle, unsettling modulations, that run across the ear like a bead of sweat escaping down the face, onto the ground which sprouts a tree.
Thick washes of reverb and delay turn strings into echoes of malfunctioning machines, churning, turning and eventually sputtering out. The track ‘Circular Ruins ” harkins early washes of MONO, Godspeed You Black Emperor etc, but the climax never comes in the same way, leaving the listener on the edge for more. Somnambulists leaves us (me) yearning a more chaotic sphere that never materializes, instead it sinks back into itself, like the worker in the field who has since run themselves devoid of motion and fluids. Perhaps the perfect sonic representation, we do not get what we want, we simply balance on the edge until the last sound can no longer be heard. Capitalism destroys the spirit and the body and this is the perfect morose soundtrack to it’s unnerving, guaranteed decay. Other tracks offer more looped spring movements , reversing, folding and collapsing on themselves, but never really moving too far from the structural or sonic reference of a guitar. Background layers of chirping drones create a ambient wash which the guitar elevates over just long and wide enough to create a lush, dynamic space to lose time in.
– Meniere Zappone
From the label.
“From the Field to the Factory is a conceptual cycle of instrumental works that reflect on labor and struggle, repression and revolt, history and forgetting, abstraction and meaning. They are meant as memorials to the invisible, the unwritten, and the unvoiced; to an inner experience existing out of time. They are hymns to an idea of the ahistorical as the lost voice of anonymous resistance echoing like stains across the battered walls of memory.”
Warren Ng is an experimental musician based in Brooklyn, NY and originally from San Francisco who has performed and released numerous recordings under the names Somnambulists and This Invitation, all linked by an interest in minimalism, string drone, and the hidden internal hum of the electric guitar.
D E C A Y C A S T Magazine 