Review - Subliminal Stimuli – Sajat Szomorusàg

I promised my friend Rain Jackson that I would review his music, so here goes: one full week of reviews for Subliminal Stimuli, starting with his first ambient album, Sajat Somorusàg.

The fact that ambient music is so easy to produce is both its greatest advantage and its downfall. Some people take this fact to mean that anything can be defined as ambient music, provided it has little to no percussion (although this limitation has also been challenged by some of Aphex Twin's ambient works). Such reasoning is what gave birth to subgenres like "drone ambient" and "noise ambient," the results of pure laziness and musical asininity. Some great examples include NGYN's "Not For Easy listening" series, AnonyWolf's ambient albums, and just about everything by Falsewander and Sunn O))).

Fortunately, there's not much of that nonsense on this album. "Sajat Szomoruság," the only Subliminal ambient album that's still available to anyone (unless you count "My Pain Is Audible," a "noise" album), manages to mellow me out and also creep me out a little without seeming like it's trying too hard to do either.

Its opener, "Újvidék igaz (Lýkur)," discards the atmospheric reverbs and wispy effects used by traditional ambient tracks, instead running an eerie vintage-esque melody through a phaser or some sort of pass filter, distorting it slightly to create the kind of stuff nightmares are made of. Other than the bassline, there doesn't appear to be much looping to be heard; instead it feels as if Rain was composing the melody to the very rhythm of his soul. Despite its impressive length, its harmonic anguish is dynamic enough to keep it from getting old.

"Hazmester" is a treat for anyone who's ever wanted to hear an extended version of Boards of Canada's "Beware The Friendly Stranger."

"The Moon" and "The Dark Side of the Moon" make an excellent pair. Their ominous chord progressions and excellent use of harmony are given meaning by the sound of the crying wolf - or perhaps he is singing.

"Memoria" is also a great tune, but its short looping melody wears out its welcome after the first two minutes, and keeps going with little to no progression for another two minutes.

The chilling, abrasive effects of "Újvidék igaz (Lýkur)" are respawned in "Kerjuk Old Engem" and "Ijesztő Csecsemő." Each begins abruptly with creepy minor chords and toxic sounds, shadowed by pads which sweep in and engulf the whole atmosphere, like dreams of floating into the deep, unfamiliar parts of a forest, unexplored for good reason.

There are a couple short filler tracks which don't necessarily deprecate the experience for me, but don't necessarily add any value to it either. The first is "[Rovid Alom]" a 4-note melody played by a MIDI flute, repeated once and only once amounting to a total of 21 seconds. Whether this even counts as a musical composition is debatable, but it does serve as a good divider between the two halves of the album. The second is "Générique de fin," which is merely Rain singing something to himself, I believe.

"Générique de fin" may be the "official" ending track, but the version available at braindanceunderground.bandcamp.com ends the album with a beautiful live cover of Aphex Twin's third track from "Selected Ambient Works Volume II," unofficially known as "Rhubarb." Probably the only happy track on the whole album, "Rabarbara" plays the Rhubarb melody backwards and forwards, and may seem to drag, but is a pleasant change of mood and easy to get lost in. In the end, "Rabarbara" gives this dark story a happy ending.

Favorite tracks: Újvidék igaz (Lýkur), Kerjuk Old Engem, Rabarbara, The Moon, The Dark Side of the Moon