Band: Blind With Rain

Album: The Chemical Window EP

Year: 2005

Label: n/a

Genre(s):  industrial, avant-garde, noise, indie

Website: www.blindwithrain.com/ 

Rating: 7.5/10

tracklist:

1. reduction; seduction

2. invade | saturate | dent

3. the chemical window

4. abrasion

5. anything at all

6. afflication

7. it took me so long

            With ‘The Chemical Window’, Blind With Rain has produced something truly unique amongst (contemporary) industrial records. The Chemical Window has one of the most schizophrenically unique blends of sound I have ever heard, piecing itself together from fragments of old school, skinny puppy-esque industrial, noise, even avant-garde and…noise rock? This album blurs the line between industrial and organic, throwing in everything (and I mean everything) from distorted beats to mellow pads to acoustic guitar, not to mention just about every form of vocal projection known to man. Whether your eyes are opened to chaotic new dimensions of a new and insane outcropping of industrial music, or you give a simple proclamation of “what the fuck!?”, this album is guaranteed to evoke some kind of response from you.

            The song structures on this album are so schizophrenic that they could baffle Squarepusher; the listener has no time to get bored with this album; everything is constantly evolving and/or imploding into some new sound as far from its origin as possible. The songs have a strange quality about them in which they don’t evolve so much as they produce abnormal levels of myriad seemingly unrelated facets of a single idea, and on close inspection the listener realizes just how deeply and meticulously every sound is crafted and slowly pieced into the greater portrait until it has been built to the monolithic structure of The Chemical Window…

            This album touches on everything from the industrial-metal styling of Stabbing Westward and Nine Inch Nails in the album’s opener ‘reduction; seduction”, to the melo atmospheres of Boards of Canada and the chaotic production techniques of the aforementioned Squarepusher, to…indie rock, with the acoustic ballad “it took me so long”. It’s done incredibly well; each genre change sounds convincing and each of the songs works in its own specialized manner to produce a more global feeling of an “album”. Sometimes it’s clear that an artist is simply experimenting in another genre and has little to no grasp of it, but that is not evident in the slightest here. Blind With Rain seems to have quite the mastery of all relevant genres.

            Unfortunately, I feel like words and textual descriptions are no match for the musical abilities of Aaron Geis. I could write paragraphs of words and phrases that dance around what the sound and textures of the music are, but they would all be futile attempts to describe a dream that of a place that could not possibly exist in these three dimensions. Despite all my praise, banter, bashing or critique on this album, the fact remains that it is a very strong piece of artistry that I feel everyone should at least check out, because it will absolutely change the way you think about industrial music, if only for a brief eclipsing moment…

-november 2006    by [.d4n b4rr3tt.]