Review: When Black To Comm's staggeringly powerful Alphabet 1968 first landed, rather confusingly in 2010, it stood out on a burgeoning ambient and drone landscape for several reasons. Firstly, it was rather short. Certainly in comparison to similar sounding releases of the day - less than 45 minutes. Secondly, it managed to cram, or rather delicately introduce, myriad sub genres and styles within the relatively brief run time. Each track comes across as though it is autonomous, yet the collection really needs to be explored as a whole to get the full impact. So while 'Trapez' has this stunning, purposefully naive quality to it - like a music box fed through various levels of distortion, chimes straining through the muffled playback - preceding number 'Forst' is this grand, palatial overture of refrains and background marching drums, taking up a full quarter of the entire album on its own. Elsewhere, 'Traum Gmbh' brings fret and chaos to the equation, shrill notes invoking horror movie scenes, while 'Musik Fur Alle' invites us into an aural realm that owes much to candlelit folk tales.
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