VLOED was built on a rigid set of rules. It was initially conceived as an experiment in percussive polyrhythms, without any beat of four that sustains the common pulse of western music. All tonality was to be mined out of found sound and samples. The foundation of this idea remains, though along the way the structure buckled and the production washed with instrumentation. The result is a certain unfamiliarity not dissimilar to laying eyes on an altered landscape. The brain struggles to fuse what it’s used to seeing against what is being presented.
Husc and Shark take this sonic concept of a storm all the way to breach, whereupon Simon Lemay finds himself struggling to find solid ground on “Flood”. By dint of his tremendous drum skills, he manages to keep the twelve minute free-form track afloat with almost no musical context to rely on.
Once the water recedes, we’re left with the silence. A common theme of post-flooding scenarios is a lack of birdsong, or of any animal activity. Futilist adds a layer of menace to this metaphor on “Quiet”, evoking the contemporary rhythms of rapid media cycles and slow institutional responses.