Alpha Drone

The debut of Alpha Drone is thus far the only major release I haven't commented on, and that's due to the perhaps surprising amount of coverage the project's first foray has received. Certainly, this is as underground as you're able to go without entering the Earth's mantle, but for those frequent users of this website it cannot be withheld that the sole composer and musician in Alpha Drone once entertained a prominent role among the discussion and information of the site itself. In the same way as the music he creates seems weirdly distant, several layers of reality separate the self-styled John Gill from his real persona, leaving the quandary of classification and the difficulty of a fair assessment. It practically goes without saying that you should divorce Alpha Drone with all notions of black metal you already entertain, while I'm not sure whether or not it's useful to think of this self-titled album as music in the strictest of senses, despite being a good deal more musical than other AD works like For Ana and Da Capo.

Why do I attempt to draw a line between music and Alpha Drone? In part, it comes down to intention, and also methods. Never do I feel that John Gill wants to give a clear picture of the core to these songs, neither thematically nor musically, which leads to elements of several unconnected genres appearing, as well as brief flashes of concept and then long disappearances of meaning. Regardless of the near-decade before Alpha Drone received any follow-up, that has remained consistent throughout the project's almost 20 year history. Somewhere, deep down, some of the songs have a metal base, and indeed black metal specifically is intimated through the use of distorted harsh vocals, rattling blastbeat drumming, and singing tremolo lines of guitar that refuse to sit in a comfortable pocket of the mix; however, almost as often the album reverts to untamed soundscapes of echoes and distortion, as of distant industrial noise, which is how 'Theozoology' starts off. Nothing discernibly musical enters that piece until an isolated organ line beams in from high above the rest of the sounds, or perhaps far below, as if the main sonic elements were an old military aircraft screaming through the sky on the way down to bomb a church from extreme close range. The booming windy voices that arrive late in that opener shed no light on proceedings, and the voices across the entire listen continue to inspire fear and bewilderment, 'Shambala Serrano' following on with weird primitive groans that give way to black metal howls.

As such, one could look upon the 5 songs here as bedroom black metal with awful production EQ and little grasp of songwriting dynamics, yet that hardly seems the point of the release. Plenty of instruments go into the creation of these pieces, often synthesized from keyboards and played with more than tolerable skill when desired, yet the caustic, parchment-dried texture of everything seems to repel the ears and capture the mind. As an equivalent, let me suggest that this album sonically represents what the visual of faded tapestries and nigh-eradicated cave paintings do to my perception of art - transport me past the gaps to a sense of the gaps having meaning. Do not confuse what I've said with the mark of a masterpiece, because Alpha Drone can be musically poor at times, and even musically obnoxious, but the aim is clearly elsewhere and in that spirit manages to send me beyond the act of merely listening. Although I mention images of antiquity in my comparison, I feel that this album hints more at philosophical than historical distance, which a quick glance at the song titles and band etymology should confirm. It helps that the almost tribal nature of 'Shambala Serrano' feels like an alien reference, but even the noise parts of the release come across as ritual electronic and industrial sound rather than anything more consonant with musical references. When the piano in 'Shambala Serrano' holds sway, it reminds a little of some symphonic black metal acts, though again the minimalism and starkness of the production sets it more in the light of the atavistic sounds that Burzum managed to magic up from limited components, increasing the mystery rather than the clarity of the passage.

Several other moments of Alpha Drone leave me wanting to say, "That's weird but it works," mainly due to the effect the awkwardly arranged instruments have on me rather than the songs according with my idea of pleasant listening. The very long 'Shambala Serrano' covers much of the content, using up 15 minutes of a sub-40 minute runtime, while 'To Take Earth Back from Man' works more as a 4 minute piece made up in its first half of an interlude, not that the spread mix ever makes it clear what should be a focus and what should not. 'Akashaganga' turns up as the other main content piece, getting into relatively normal black metal after a couple of minutes, yet here again things don't work as you'd expect and the monotonous blastbeats can be practically tuned out as drawn out soothing vocals waft over the foreground, making it sound like 2 songs are playing at once. If this were a real attempt at black metal, you'd throw out the horrid programmed rhythms and start again, but that's just how you know it's not. Even the spoken sample that opens 'The Sophonaut' can barely be discerned through its own distortion, and that's sort of how the whole album works: the more you strain your ears to hear the more the sounds escape, and the harder you try to catch the meaning the harder it becomes to do so.

You could easily deep dive into Alpha Drone and come up clutching only handfuls of mud, while you could just as easily sift out a pearl on your first try if you feel at home in the environment. I don't want to say that this debut excels in painting any kind of image or producing any specific effect on me, but I should applaud its ability to obfuscate all guesswork and remain fiercely different to the point of intrigue. When I listen to drone music, I find I can often place my own meaning onto albums and thus gain more satisfaction from listening to them; with Alpha Drone, it's more like I hear a language that I have heard impossibly once before, and with every subsequent listen I forget a little more of what I first knew.