The first song on
Burning the Flags offers a unique sleight of hand. It begins with abrupt unpleasantry and does not change nearly at all during its runtime, blasting you with grinding noise, feedback and reverb. Yet at some point, like the unnatural noise of some HVAC system running in the background as you sleep, you find yourself oddly discomforted when it shuts off and is replaced by silence. It's a curious thing when a static and sustained sound initially acts as nothing but noise yet manages to transition into comfort and contentment without actually changing in any way. The only gradient is in your head, and Alocasia Garden rely solely on that fact with this album. You can't really blame yourself for being so originally dismissive; it’s impossible to discern why you'd ever appreciate a spectral density matching that of an aux chord placed against the electrical impulses of your skin and muscle. Yet your brain
does soften up to it, and manages to enjoy drowning out the rest of the world to remain in the one Alocasia Garden creates.
Eventually intricacies do bleed through: slight variations of synth and strings buried below the audio chaos, but it’s at best negligible. The focus remains on the digital blanket of static that isn't really that provocative, at least compared to other similar albums. Instead, it is
Burning the Flags’ parasitic ability to seed itself into something perfectly cozy that separates it from a clustered pack. I could never explain
why it is intrinsic more to this album than any other drone or noise work, just that it is, and I will confidently point to
Burning the Flags as the album that pulled its trick on me more so than any of its brethren. Where I once felt pain, I now feel numb, and it's welcoming. I find myself putting this album on at times that I would have once called improper. It now acts a blanket to rest an active mind onto, giving it enough purpose to stick around, and an oddity of an experience I would recommend.
