Review Summary: seeds of something
Young enigma Brendan Nixon caused a bit of a stir this year with the release of his hulking terminal self-titled, putting the project dubbed "Sensory Deprivation" to rest with the most refined and focused display of his own particularly visceral take on post-rock. He quickly emerged with a new project, hence Analgesin, and under this name has taken his noisy explorations of dynamic rock music into new realms of texture. This new music boasts spring as much as it does winter, sugary fondness as much as heartache, and sedated ambiance as much as ethereal crescendos. It is a simple action of letting the darkness surround you, but not overtake you, that allows these brighter exchanges to take place. Acoustic guitar and glockenspiel choose to make much more appearances this time around than dissonant breakdowns or sharp walls of feedback, although Brendan makes sure we know he still has some draconian tricks up his sleeve.
Seeds of Nothing seems somewhat like a spiritual successor to "SNSRY DPRVTN", if only in scope, occupying a healthy but lengthy eighty-four minutes, and is accompanied by a hazed out long-form music video that is effective in giving more perspective to his trudging tunes. The first half of the record flows remarkably well as a uniform piece, but is especially poignant during the opener and title track, immediately throwing you into jarring yet harmonious acoustic chords with intangible background noise fading in out and out of tune. Brendan's wailing vocals work perfectly over the top of this verse, hinting towards accessibility, but always remaining ominous. The piece then gets quiet, I suppose too quiet, before erupting into perhaps the most momentous climax on the record, as well as the most succinct. Other highlights of this first half include Distorted Symmetry, a bass-heavy plodding piece that highlights Brendan's vocals, as well as how seamlessly he is able to combine styles. The sixth track, the celestial Silver Mirror, a self-proclaimed homage to Talk Talk that is very much its own beast, is also worth mentioning.
The second half practically follows suit to the first, while introducing even more atmosphere and experimentation. It features two of the album's most subdued songs with Love as Pilgrimage and Requiem For?, the former being a sparse and glockenspiel dominated reverb ride, and the latter being my personal favourite entirely ambient track Brendan has created, thoroughly realizing the notion of "ignorable but interesting." This whole subsequent side is not zephyr and candy however, seeing two rather volatile pieces in the form of the two longest tracks here, The World is a Dead Moon and Russian. In this case, the former calls us back to the dramatic dynamics and fuzzy, overcast ascensions of Sensory Deprivation. Russian on the other hand, functioning well as our closer, gets it upsurge out of the way first thing before decaying into the lumbering rhythmic folkgaze that largely encompasses Analgesin's music. But, just as Brendan puts it, he couldn't help the descent. I don't think any of us could. Still, it feels good to be in love with the world.
