(2021) Cabaret Voltaire - BN9Drone


Review:
The second of a pair of longform experimental ambient releases from Richard H. Kirk’s solo reboot of Cabaret Voltaire, BN9Drone is another apocalyptic soundscape filled with heavy washes of distortion and ominous voices that seem like broken transmissions from across a battlefield. Instead of building and paying off, the piece continually swarms and festers, occasionally flaring up with bursts of white noise or sharply modulated tones. Moments occur where it gets especially tense and noisy and feels like it’s going to break through to another mood, but then it just falls back and passes. A raw horror synth melody pops up around 32 minutes, for example, but then it quickly seems to get sidetracked and covered in blankets of smog. There also seems to be deliberate sense of pacing to the piece, as there’s space to breathe before each idea is introduced, but it also sounds loose and improvised. Compared to Dekadrone, BN9Drone doesn’t quite lift off, staying closer to the ground for its duration, and at 64 minutes (including a false ending), it simply goes on for roughly twice as long as it needs to. A shorter dose of it can be effective, however.





Track Listing:
01 - BN9Drone (01.04.00)


Media Report:
Genre: ambient, electronic
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits