The first track of this album is “The Passage”. Almost frantic percussion plays, with a focus on cymbal and snare, and soon a highly distorted guitar comes in and plays a progression of several long, very distorted chords, half-drowning out the drums. At about the four minute mark, a new chord is played, and then the progression returns to its original form, but its a deception, as the guitar transitions to playing a sequence of pentatonic notes, then hits a chord and ends the song.
“Gates” begins with factory-like percussion with distorted, pulsating bass, and a tonal noise played at two notes, which serves as a melody. After a bit, the note shifts to a new sequence, and the percussion becomes more frantic, then returns to its original form, only to transition in a bit to a lower sequence. The note drones, and the percussion becomes frantic over it. The percussion sort of trails off with the notes playing over it, and then becomes stronger again. At the end, the drums stop, ending the song.
“Contraction” starts with four-to-the-floor percussion with an off-beat bass, and quite a bit of distortion on something that drones. The drums change in intensity over the course of the track, then the bass drum plays a few times by itself and the song ends.
“Crystal Subwaves” begins with some periodic noise fading in over xylophone-like synthesizer, with guitar noise being put through many effects playing with quite a bit of dynamics. There is a melodic-noise section, as notes are obviously being played, although they are put through a ton of distortion and reverb. Then, a passage with a lot of shifting dynamics can be heard, as the synthesizer either is completely obscured by guitar-noise or has ceased. The song fades out, ending it.
“Five To Six Rmixed” has two highly distorted power-chords playing over a simple drumbeat. After a while, the drumbeat has a few snare hits added. Then, the whole thing sustains for a bit and transitions to a passage with clean-guitar playing over an unusual drumbeat. There is a bit of ring-modulated sounding noise in the background, which exists after the guitar and drums have ceased.
“Glass Prison” has some harsh noise playing over a bass guitar, which is what stands out from what sounds like a complete song playing in the background. The noise has a droning, distorted character, but shifts around and has dynamics. The guitar plays some notes, then ceases, leaving the other noises, and some high-pitched noise plays over them. What sounds like (but probably isn’t) some flute playing can be heard through a lot of effects.
“Tempest” begins with some notes pulsating in a quick pattern. Then, some metallic object being struck can be heard, with a wash of static laid over the whole thing. A siren-like noise plays, not too discernibly. A high-resonance, distorted noise pokes its head out of the mix as well. A periodic noise like a fast, distorted washing machine plays, and then all of the sound slows down to nothing and the track ends.
“Your Ashen Hair” begins with a fast periodic noise, and a highly distorted guitar with a lot of reverb on it plays in the background behind it. There is an effect-laden instrument that plays loudly, and then some voices speaking. Some tones come into being in the mix after quite some time has passed, and there is a percussive noise of some sort in a constant repetition, which fades to a lower volume after a bit. The instruments stop playing, one by one, and that’s the end of the song and album.
(https://hydratransmitter.bandcamp.com/album/early-favorites, €1 EUR for digital)
