Nature, even after scientific development, remains mysterious as it’s always been, albeit in different ways. To avoid confrontation with the unknown and fall into a perpetual state of fear, we grant nature a very human front; we make familiar that which otherwise might be completely alien and incomprehensible. For example, when we say that birds are singing songs, language is making those specific sounds and chirps they use to communicate into something we can tangentially understand, because birds don’t really sing, and they don’t compose songs either. At work are our minds trying to establish a comfortable space in which we lead a certain understanding of a distant Nature, a Nature that confronts us with sensorial experiences of all kinds, from which Lawrence English parts, allowing us to ask a question: “Can we understand?”

Kiri No Oto is Japanese for “the sound of fog;” the choice of language already implies a distance, an enigma that not many of us can understand at first, unsuitable for translation, something that we won’t ever be able to fully express in our own language. In a metaphorical sense, that is Nature, and it produces countless mysteries which constantly assault our senses and perception as wholes, just like “the sound of fog” is a description of a full spatial experience, both visual and audible. Through technology we’ve shielded ourselves from such attacks, keeping Nature well-trimmed, domesticated, paradoxically drawing ourselves ever more apart from it while at the same time getting closer. Lawrence English has crafted a work that represents this well: he takes us into the territory of the fiercely uncontrollable through the use of analog filtering and a diversity of mixing techniques, all human-controlled, all representative of Nature as interpreted by man through the use of machines. This Nature, in first instance conceived as an abstract other, acquires physical form: the mist, the rain, the ocean, the things that immediately strike us when we set our eyes on them, and interpretation begins.

The artist makes this focus clear with the thunderous introduction “Organs Lost At Sea," its overpowering magnificence driving our senses numb into an awe-inspired paralysis, an organic wall of sound streaming through our minds and replacing any and all coherent thoughts with the electronic and metallic visual contemplation of an ocean of sound. This is modern man’s Nature: the city, the machines, the static, the street lamps outshining the stars. Electronic sound waves leave no room for silence; just like urban life, “Short Fuse” fills our ears with hums and distant frequencies. “White Spray” becomes a dual-sensed track: we could imagine the ocean’s foam spraying over the rocks it crashes upon; but we could as well think of industrial-use white spray paint, with its equally intermittent bursts of violence attempting to cover up everything in its path in an unconscious reflection of our fear to the void, our fear of dark, silent nothingness. Fortunately, the artist “Waves Sheer Light”, guiding our minds through a narrow tunnel of soundscapes which immerse us in pure, unadulterated loneliness; the loneliness of lacking a translation, the loneliness of facing Nature and finding out it’s not as familiar as you may have thought.

With a smooth and clear transition, the artist decides to intervene, in a metaphorical voice, making his “Commentary:” you’re not alone, in the background you can hear the calming sound of the sea, and it’s all part of the artist’s discourse, now revealed... you can finally pull yourself out, and rest. For that he plays a “Lullaby”, and you can hear a meditative, ritualistic chant that makes you company… until you find out it’s not sung by real voices: they’re machines, the same machines that with hums and beeps and warming electricity lull you into sleep, replacing the apparent necessity of silence, maybe even becoming a new kind of silence themselves.

In that sleep, you find yourself “Lone by Power Station;” the distortion makes an appearance, it’s the ethereal confusion of the supposedly blank moments before and between dreams which hint at something that vanishes just as quickly as neuronal electric impulses. Your brain is working in mysterious, machine-like ways, powering your dreams, your R.E.M, keeping your organs in order while it lets the body rest and recover. “Oamura” (a New Zealandese town) closes the album with a return to the sea; this time the sea of the unconscious, the self-induced trance of contemplating Nature, our century’s mechanical version of it, washing away in the background electronic tension of our dreams.

Kiri No Oto reveals itself as a mirror of that Nature which we’re no longer a part of, but which we have absorbed, imitated, and controlled to some extent, creating our very own modern version. The problem is that it may become monotonous after the excellent first impression of the beginning tracks wears off, sounding (oh, the fear!) like nothing, allowing us to get lost in the endless waves of sounds. This is music that demands focus, but then again, it may induce distraction, especially if not listened to in a quiet, lonely place.

(Un)Fortunately, thanks to modern times, we’ve got plenty of those. And even then, we’re always in the company of the hums, drones, and mysterious functioning of all those machines we can call, unlike Nature, our own.

-David Murrieta