Solo Andata: "Aggregate"

Congratulations to Paul Fiocco and Kane Ikin—according to their press sheet, their third LP as Sola Andata celebrates their continuing “engagement with the unknown.” That must have been some moment, proposing to the unknown, and I can only hope the big day lives up to the spooky family’s high standards, featuring UFOs, a crop circle seating plan, and a cake in the shape of the Escher stairs. Fiocco and Ikin will still have full control of the bridal march, of course: their music as Solo Andata has kicked the drone guide book into a fire, grown in the torture chambers of 12k and mastered in the bays of Australia. Sounds standard enough for a genre based on noise manipulation, but Buffalo imprint Desire Path Recordings have let Fiocco and Ikin push their sound into the dankest sub-basements of hell, mixing wildlife, meat cleavers, cancer and monk chants with never-ending pads to form Ritual. This is not a place the uninitiated want to go, especially not on first cut “Aggregate.” For Christ’s sake, listen to Brian Eno first, then spend a week living rough in the country.

The art of camping is actually an essential warm-up, as it’ll prepare you for the track’s first deception: crickets. These aren’t the little chirpers you hear on a night in the meadows, though, and pretty soon they’ve dissolved into dentist’s drill whine that keeps coming closer and closer. “What a warm-up,” you’ll think, and you’ll think it for for the next six minutes as “Aggregate” just keeps on building. A theremin tuned to the dog spectrum becomes hooked to electrical transformers, and then blinding sentry lights kick in, revealing clouds of fat hovering wasps. These disparate components all accelerate and duel, and make you think that, should Solo Andata ever do a penal colony tour, this is the track the wardens will sign off to dissuade the inmates from escaping. If you don’t run your own prison camp, though, and you just want to hear something more out there, you need to take a deep breath before getting down with Fiocco and Akin. “Aggregate” is truly not a track to take lightly, not for one single second. though it might be if you set it as a vicar’s alarm signal so he’ll wake up and think he’s been reaped.