Review Summary: Save our oceans
The 'plastisphere' refers to the microbial community growing upon the plastic debris in the ocean. There is now more plastic debris in the ocean than there is marine debris. It is currently being investigated whether a core community exists that is specific to plastic, but the fact that we have inadvertently created a 'plastisphere' is a shocking revelation on its own. And it was a provocative idea for electronic artist Forces to use in guiding an album. Through nine meticulous tracks,
Plastisphere suggests a journey to a world underneath, a new world that has built itself upon the waste of another.
For categorization purposes,
Plastisphere is a highly conceptual and compositionally rich take on the post-club or deconstructed club style. Post-club being known for its experimental takes on energetic and beat-driven electronic styles,
Plastisphere masterfully delivers on these fronts: hard, mechanical drum patterns, shimmering lead lines, and chopped-up voice samples all find a place here. But there are also factors that set this album quite apart from other works of its style. It's gorgeously detailed; there is hardly a single hollow space on any of the tracks, contrary to sparser and more skeletal modes of post-club. And the album’s experimental nature, regarding the sounds that build the songs and the balance of their deliriously sped-up rhythms, sets it apart even further. The result is something so truly head-spinning that it realizes itself as a groundbreaking work of electronic music in general.
The tracks here don't feel 'deconstructed' so much as reconstructed. Sonically, the album is a sensory overload. Many of the beats are quite frantic and jerky; sometimes the kicks are so close together that there's literally no space between them and it sounds more like a drill than something you'd dance to. There is also a lot of intentional overlapping of sounds, which creates a mesmerizing effect of the song running to catch up with itself. It's almost like the 'beat' is more implied by the repetitive motion than it is by the drums themselves being exactly in time with each other. But this idea isn't only applied to the beats; most sounds within the songs are subject to being chopped up and 'skipped' repeatedly, a prime example of this being the voice samples in 'As Long as Skies Are Blue:' multiple vocal parts all skipping and glitching alongside each other, creating a jarring, but beautiful new kind of harmony. Opener 'Pattern Definitions' introduces these ideas clearly from the beginning, while also retaining a certain danceability that perfectly suits an opener. And while its rhythm and gradual swells are engaging enough on their own, I find myself just as fascinated by the trail of sounds each kick and each synth note leave behind.
Second track 'Symbionts' is when the album begins to really show its essence and the breadth of its experimentation. The song has multiple rhythms; all of them pulsing and hammering. One of them is essentially an electronic 'blast.' The aggressive drums pound along while occasionally the synths bend inward and almost seem to pause the motion, but of course, it never really pauses. And if the idea wasn’t clear yet, 'Great Pacific' is when it will dawn that
Plastisphere is markedly more of a conceptual piece than something meant for a club or a rave. 'Great Pacific' is essentially an ambient track, akin to that feeling of flying in an airplane over the ocean and seeing nothing but blue in all directions. It's soft and shimmery, but there's also a note of mystery underneath. And near the end, a rain of kick drums begins to beat at the washy wall of sound, seemingly from behind it. This moment seems important, because here there truly is no 'beat.' The kick drums just fall randomly like rain; a completely repurposed sound.
For all the extremes of sound that
Plastisphere explores, it is remarkably balanced. There are the heavy and frenzied tracks, like 'Symbionts,' 'Ghost Nets,' and 'Imminent;' prettier and more wistful ones like 'As Long as Skies Are Blue,' 'Great Pacific,' and 'Shards and Pellets,' and a few more that rest somewhere in between. 'Alga' nearly enters noise territory, not by an abrasive harshness, but by a subtle layering of clipping feedback that gradually rises like algae to the surface of the water. And ‘Pit Formers’ is a trip somewhere deeper and darker, like a trench. The track retains an eerie negative space around its central sounds, and the frantic, blind motions of these central ‘pit forming’ characters make the whole arrangement sound that much more unnerving.
It seems that the magic of
Plastisphere lies in the precise arrangement of its sounds. It's difficult to not sit back in awe of the sheer work put into any one of the tracks. Despite relying on repetition for momentum, nothing seems to sound exactly the same as the time before. I consider this groundbreaking for an electronic album, and especially one with beats this physically demanding. By turns hectic and contemplative; battering and beautiful;
Plastisphere is a new sphere of sound rising to the surface. Recalling the idea of the plastisphere, perhaps the album had been theoretically assembling itself for some time, just like the plastic gathering in the ocean. Remarkable then how it sounds like nothing I've heard before.
