Somewhere Between Drones and Field Recordings

I’ve been trying to write a review of Venus Vulture’s The Pylon Suite (Zenapolæ) for several days now, but since it came out in October 2010, I’ve been telling myself that I’d do it after I’ve written a review of a more current release. Well, no more. The Pylon Suite comes in two varieties, either one track of 38 minutes or four tracks of about nine minutes each. I’ve listened to both, but for this review I’ll be focusing on the one long track.

The Pylon Suite is an ambient study with drones and a long field recording mixed together. In other reviews on this blog, I talk about the use of pace, the ability for the artist to guide the the listener along in their piece of music. (I’m sure there is a musicology term for this  thing I call pace ). Soundscape artist Sean Monaghan (aka Venus Vulture) has got the idea of pace as he cohesively mixes these two streams of musical content.  The piece flows together so well that there were several times when I’ve listened to this album back to back (the four-piece version and the one-piece) and have been in utter contentment and bliss.