As a dedicated ‘indie-kid’ I remember being round at my girlfriend’s flat in the equally dedicated bohemian quarter of Sheffield’s Broomhill district. It was late, we’d both been drinking and we were sitting down to share that inevitable post-pub spliff. And being a sort of club-sort she casually dismissed the ‘His n’Hers’ Pulp disc I pushed at her, and instead bunged into the CD player something that sounded as if we’d been surreptitiously lowered into a subterranean chamber in Tibet and had the better part of our souls diffused amongst some sprawling cosmic consciousness. But being pissed, I didn’t mind. What was it, I asked. ‘Ambient’, she said. Did it ‘perk up’ at all, I asked? ‘Not really’, she replied. And that was about it. I sat there as a metaphor for ‘pissed, vacant and unlikely to initiate sexual intercourse’ and waited for it to finish. But it never did. And I suspect it’s still playing in my girlfriend’s flat to some other mismatched couple some fifteen years later, because that is what ‘ambient’ is all about: the infinite.
And it’s with this same weary resignation that I approach, ‘Run Silent, Run Deep’ by Dialog>. First off, it has a ‘concept’ or ‘conceit’ if you prefer, in which water is a metaphor for the unconscious mind and our urges portrayed as deep sea monsters that threaten to drag us down (full fathom) to the murky depths. It’s a ’20,000 Leagues Under The Sea’ thing. A big, f*cking octopus thing. And there it rests on the bottom as a symbol of belligerent and negative forces. So if you were looking to explain the presence of assorted dub-step influences, slightly unconvincing techno and the extensive use of sounds below 90 HZ then this is it: it’s all been conceived as a smooth submersible ride beneath the foam of one’s own consciousness. In an exposure suit, naturally. And with sequencers and shit.
Why listen Jarvis when you can have something as deep and as rolling as the tobacco between your fingers. Neither abysmal nor plain exactly – but not too perky either.
“RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP’ by DIALOG is released on 24.08.09 through LO-TEK