LULL

Howard Stelzer (courtesy of The Search For Dark Matter website)

While lacking the dub style of Mick Harris's other solo project Scorn, Lull is still an ambient work of art. Treading the same path as other atonal ambient composers "Continue" is mastered as a single track, 62 minutes in length. However that is where the comparison ends. Instead of gift wrapping the album with copious liner notes and technical information, the tray card on this release in blank save for the band, album title, artists, and sparse label information. This blank canvas allows us as the listener to paint the portrait of the music within our own minds instead of trying to interpret the cover art. I think that it is this simplicity that makes this album stand out from other similar work of ambience. By allowing us to interpret the composition rather than a third party we can derive whatever message means the most to us. Quite a bold move on the part of Mr. Harris, but then again Mick hasn't really ever been concerned with other peoples interpretations of his music.

Jester (courtesy of the Sonic Boom website)

Sixty-two minutes, one song. Mick Harris is done with Scorn (I never did hear the final album--hint, hint), but he continues his electronic experimenting with Lull. The first three albums were on Sentrax, and now Harris has moved to Release (where an increasing number of old earache hands seem to be arriving).

Much more daring than latter-day Scorn, Harris used Lull to really flesh out strange musical ideas and stretch the boundaries of music. Sure, it seems like a pain to sit through sixty-something minutes of one song, but trust me: It's worth the wait.

The main difference is that Lull doesn't rely on a backing beat track. And as Harris seemed to be getting a bit derivative in that way toward the end of the Scorn run, I'm all for this new direction.

Call it what you like: ambient, electronic, whatever. Mick Harris has come through again with a revolutionary disc. Now I've just got to dig up those earlier Lull albums.

Jon Worley (courtesy of the Aiding & Abetting website)

So what does the title suggest to you? One single, simple word which might hint at life going on despite adversity, or perhaps the tedium of that life, or merely the progression of any experience between two points of pause. Where LULL are concerned it probably means to further search an area they had ventured into on half a dozen previous releases. Structure? Forget it! Any attempt to arrange LULL into logical progressive format was left way behind after the first album.So what does that leave us with. Well, a glance at the uniform grey sleeve might give you a hint - muted noises which swell and boil in soporific cloud chamber drifts, rising whines and booms, the impression of having slowed time down, of the journey through Industrial subterranean factories continues, passages through dimly lit chambers, hearing machines in the distance which sound like they are ... could they be ... somehow biological and actually alive? Shadows and lightplay, shimmers and dust grey. To fully appreciate this music it needs to be played loud, through a decent stereo to the point where individual tones envelop you in turn, like ghosts inviting you to their Danse Macabre. You therefore become at one with the indistinct noises, caught amidst caverns, ravines, mountains and valleys of noise, lost hopelessly and without a care.

This music is dark, yes, but it isn't so disturbing as to be scary. I'd say it's more cloying, wrapping itself around the listener in a cold embrace, numbing the senses 'til you're lost within it, absorbed into the greylight tones.

Antony Burnham (courtesy of the Metamorphic Journeyman website)

Lull is another manifestation of the dark ambient musings of Mick Harris, who has been in the groups Scorn, Napalm Death, and Painkiller, and collaborated with Bill Laswell, James Plotkin, and others. Continue consists of a single 62 minute track of cavernous electronic gloom. It reminds me strongly of Stalker by Robert Rich and Brian Lustmord, or the Drones compilations from Asphodel. For me, Continue evokes images of underground mazes filled with machines which retain their cold sentience and function long after their creators have disappeared. It conveys the endpoint of industrialized civilization, the breakdown and decay of a society that reached too far. Echoing drones, electronic noise, and unrecognizable samples create a wall of sound which throbs but lacks beat or direction. This is an excellent album for late night solitary listening, particularly for those dwelling in basements or windowless apartments, but will likely find difficulty in obtaining radio airplay. I like it very much, and recommend it for both radio programmers and darkwave audiophiles. Instrumentation: Electronics, samplers.

Jeff Johansen (courtesy of the Music for Asylums website)