You probably had to make one at school yourself: a collage. Are you not familiar with those? It is a kind of poster on which you, with or without a few classmates, had to find all kinds of images about one subject. A working method that is used regularly in education, because it appeals to other skills than answering questions or writing a text. Whereas until a few years ago the cut or torn photos and drawings from magazines simply had to be pasted onto a sheet of paper, a digital collage is common as well nowadays. Does the word mood board ring a bell? The advantage of a digital collage is that it can contain more different kinds of information and source material, such as moving images and music, which means that the whole can contain even more variety.
Ontology Of Nought by German Ingurgitating Oblivion can also be considered a collage, but then one of multi-colored sound. A colorful kaleidoscope of sounds, tones and reverberations. Seven years after their previous album Vision Wallows In Symphonies Of Light, the Berlin duo has sonically developed their deviant ideas, illustrious premonitions and prescient visions. Ontology Of Nought mainly consists of relentless, pulverizing riffs, biting, unruly fury, capricious wind instruments, jazzy sections, elongated instrumental passages and an incessant, impressive stream of unbridled blast beats. Crushing, visionary ideas are elaborated into music that is full of unpredictability. Conflicting rhythmic patterns, oppressive consistency and seething distortion result in an innovative complexity and are captured in epically long songs, the shortest of which lasts over ten minutes and the longest almost reaching the nineteen minutes mark. At first hearing, total confusion and complete disorganization seem to reign. Any overview, any sense of organization or order seems to be missing. But just as can be the case with a collage, the different parts do not necessarily form a whole because they are about the same subject; they fit together because they are brought together in the same place.
The band seems to be averse to walking the beaten path or following fixed patterns and resolutely follows its own plan. Even if it means that the listener is not able to make heads or tails of this. The chaos is partly caused by the many different styles on the album (to name but a few: death metal, folk, jazz, classical, rock), the idiosyncratic additions (such as a piece of monotonous spoken text at the end of various songs) and the use of many different sound generators. I deliberately choose not to use the word instrument here, as I seem to distinguish the sounds of singing bowls, a bicycle bell and a typewriter in …Lest I Should Perish With Travel, Effete And Weary, As My Knees Refuse To Bear Me Thither? Or am I imagining them and is this musical labyrinth running away with my thoughts?
The enormously diverse musical implementation means that this cannot be musically pigeonholed. Although in the case of Ingurgitating Oblivion you may also have to ask whether you should want that at all. You have to undergo, experience, feel this. Are you driven crazy from this auditory tangle? Oh well, isn’t it said that insanity and genius are sometimes uncomfortably close together? Could that be the case here too? Because just when you think that all coherence is lacking, that there is no overview and that you seem to be getting deadly tired from the tsunami of sound that is flooding you, it is striking how all those seemingly haphazardly thrown together frills form a beautiful overall picture. Listening to it, experiencing it… is believing it.
Score:
85/100
Label:
Willowtip Records, 2024
Tracklisting:
- Uncreation’s Whirring Loom You Ply With Crippled Fingers
- To Weave The Tapestry Of Nought
- The Blossoms Of Your Tomorrow Shall Unfold In My Heart
- …Lest I Should Perish With Travel, Effete And Weary, As My Knees Refuse To Bear Me Thither
- The Barren Earth Oozes Blood, And Shakes And Moans, To Drink Her Children’s Gore
Line-up:
- Norbert Müller – Guitars
- Florian Engelke – Guitars, vocals, Tibetan singing bowls
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