Rockdrill by VORTEX
Vortex is a German sound art project from :Golgotha: and Aeterna member Marcus Stiglegger, challenging the boundaries of ritual and dark ambient music. After the critically acclaimed debut album "Phanopoeia" (2008) out on Tesco Organization and the media book/soundtrack "Silence" (:Ikonen: media 2009), the new full length album ‘Rockdrill’ continues on the same path and mobilizes acoustic instruments (guitar, percussion, piano), voice, electronics and samples to create a unique and very epic sound monument in 11 parts. Vortex is named after a modernist British art movement of the 1920s called Vorticism, headed by Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis. The new album ‘Rockdrill’ is especially inspired by a sculpture called ‘Rock Drill’by the Vorticist artist Sir Jacob Epstein (1880-1959). It was built according to his sketches in 1913-14 to symbolize 'the terrible Frankenstein's monster we have made ourselves into'. The sculpture had a huge influence on the Vorticist movement and inspired several cantos by Ezra Pound (LXXXV–XCV, Section: Rock-Drill, 1956). It was destroyed during the war and cast again in bronze in 1962. Epstein himself did not like the sculpture and decided to "save" only a part of the actual figure - not the rock drill itself. The concept of this album is to reconstruct the history, mood and allegory of this piece of sculptural art as well as its impact on modern art movements. A 12 page booklet adds rare visual documents to the whole.‘Rockdrill’ by Vortex is consciously caught between archaic and modern energies, between history and present. This truly complex album transcends the frontiers of ambient soundscapes in order to awake a nearly forgotten sense of beauty and grace within modernist avant-garde by using twisted rhythm patterns, pounding industrial percussion and fragile organic ambiance.Fans of Northern European post industrial acts will appreciate this album for it sheer power and atmospheric strength while sound art listeners will slowly uncover layer after layer of this many faced composition.
Edition of 500 copies in 4 panel digi sleeve with 12 page booklet.
11 Tracks. Running Time 53:50
Tracklist
| 1. | Rockdrill I | 4:42 |
| 2. | Canto Spoleto | 5:15 |
| 3. | Spiral | 4:42 |
| 4. | Fatalism | 4:29 |
| 5. | Iron Cage | 3:20 |
| 6. | Persistence | 3:46 |
| 7. | Asylum | 3:59 |
| 8. | Construction | 4:00 |
| 9. | The Fall | 5:18 |
| 10. | Rockdrill II | 7:40 |
| 11. | Epilogue - Canto Zero | 6:47 |
