Inverz - My Machines FLAC

TEXTURA

Recorded between autumn and winter of 2010, Inverz's My Machines spreads six slabs of electro-acoustic dark ambient across two twelve-inch vinyl sides (available in 250 copies). It's the fourth release under the Inverz name by Savvas Metaxas, who's otherwise known as the guitarist in Good Luck Mr. Gorsky. It's only natural, then, that guitar figures prominently in the album's material, but, having said that, it would be misleading to characterize My Machines as a guitar-based album, as the instrument is just one of many that make up the album's sound world. As stated, Inverz's material is generally dark ambient in nature, with Metaxas drawing upon a wealth of manipulated vinyl samples as well as sounds culled from musical and non-musical sources for the album's construction. Electric and acoustic guitars, synthesizers, and field recordings constitute some of the sources Metaxas used to produce the six settings.
It wouldn't be stretching things too far to say that the album often plays like a quintessential Miasmah release, especially during those moments when cavernous, dungeon-like spaces are evoked. Consider “A Series of Tragic Events,” whose creaking noises suggest some hapless victim being strapped into a torture device, as one such example (the presence of ghoulish chantings only makes the track seem all the more unearthly). Also consistent with the Miasmah style, a neo-classical dimension emerges during the ultra-woozy “SVL” when a vocal loop swims alongside shuddering fragments of orchestral instruments. Elsewhere, macabre industrial clatterings resonate within a ghostly, crackled-infested zone during “This Machine Is Dead,” resulting in a haunted gloomscape that's like some diseased, long-buried memory welling up from the unconscious. Relatively becalmed by comparison, the final piece “About Closure” carves a ponderous path through a ruined landscape of guitar strums and violin scrapings. Those with a jones for hell-bound ambient soundscaping could do a whole lot worse than sample Inverz's plunge into the dark side.

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VITAL WEEKLY

'My Machines' is the fourth release by Savvas Metaxas also known as Inverz and I believe the first on LP for him. I reviewed two of three previous releases, which seemed to be dwelling heavily on processed guitar, but according to the information this new record 'focuses on the collection, process and reproduction of old vinyl record which are then combined with sound samples from musical and non-musical sources' - but I wouldn't be too surprised to know if he'd thrown some more guitar and sound effects too. Compared to his previous record 'Songs' (see Vital Weekly 639), this new one seems a bit more densely orchestrated, resulting in soundscape like music of a darker nature. Now the fact that I think its not all from old vinyl is in a track like 'About Closure', which has a looped guitar, a bend violin and crackles from vinyl (which sometimes are a lot, so that one isn't sure if this is from the pressing or the actual music - nice!). But yes, throughout there seems to be indeed various bits from old vinyl being used. Unlike Daniel Padden's recent LP which went in a similar direction, Inverz uses a more abstract form on his music, given away less from the original than Padden and despite the some over active use of reverb delivers a highly enjoyable record. Inverz' music has grown from the previous one, in which he was too much of one of the drone guys, and now he has expanded his drones into a bit wider field of musique concrete like sounds. Throughout that works pretty well. The way to go, I'd say. (FdW)

TOUCHING EXTREMES

The fourth release by Greek Savvas Metaxas aka Inverz is also my first stumble upon his work. The sphere is that of oneiric soundscaping, in this case implying the exercising of aged vinyl in addition to instrumental fonts and real-life noises. A risky territory to move in – too many practitioners of the same act around, some of them excessively puffed up in relation to the music’s actual value – yet the assignment was definitely well handled: Inverz managed in fact to protract this reviewer’s interest during a number of successive listens, the classic “unavoidable comparisons” frame of mind all but absent. The psychological milieu where the sounds are competently placed appears to be of paramount importance for Metaxas, whose gently misshapen shards of erstwhile orchestral echoes and slowly oscillating concoctions of blurred recurrences often produce true art. Everything is filtered by several layers of translucent abstraction, rare morsels of tangible aural matter enhancing the whole; one vainly attempts to discern vague figures, or the provenience of a group of frequencies. This hopelessness in identifying what exactly is going on should be seen more as a reward than a deficiency on the listener’s side. This is music that must be left spreading without caring about who, what or when; it works, it is beautiful in its own unique way, and asks nothing except billowing all over the place.