Remember all that tense and eerie creeping around through that hulking spacecraft in the original Alien movie? Well, Sleep Research Facility wants to take you on a tour of that same ship--going deep into its bowels, with hardly any light, as intense and ominous as any scene with Ripley skulking through the vastness of the Nostromo's interiour spaces. Yes, welcome aboard, all hands on deck.
This 2007 CD is a reissue of Sleep Research_Facility's limited edition 2001 debut CD on Cold Spring Records (original pressing run was 1000 copies). It adds one more track, "Narcissus," to its original five track--A-Deck to E-Deck--playlist, which is a delightful bonus because this initial effort from SR_F definitely leaves this listener wanting more.
The tracks on this disc are dark and deep with an emphasis on lower end frequencies. At times it will shake your walls even at a moderate volume and I can only imagine what listening to it with a proper 2.1 setup would be like: intense. Depending on the track, the bass frequencies provide anything from a slowly pulsating rhythm to a steady background drone. This easily captures what it might be like--in the imagination, anyway--to be wandering around on a spaceship powered by some kind of nuclear fusion reactor, and not to mention readily bringing to mind the feeling of drifting through the seemingly boundless void of outer space.
Soundscapes unwind slowly on Nostromo. This is an exercise in experimental, dark ambience, yes, but there definitely seems to be a meditative aspect to these recordings as well. Put this on through some headphones, get comfortable, breathe deeply and regularly, and I'm pretty sure you'll be successfully transported into some strange interiour landscapes. The pacing is sedate but not dull. Tracks unfold with drawn out sounds, pulsing tones, minimalist pondering synths, and healthy doses of skillfully dialled reverb. At times there is a palpable sense of dismal foreboding.
But it's not all droning electronica and throbbing bass frequencies. On several tracks there are "glitch" type elements recontextualized from glitch's more (at times) upbeat approach and frequent drum and bass sort of sensibilities. In other words, the glitch sounds heard on Nostromo fit in well with the overall vast glacial textures and serve to remind us that perhaps we really are part of a doomed crew's terminal voyage.
Glitchy or otherwise "abrasive" sounds add subtle layers of more "noise" oriented experimentalism into some of the tracks, but without going anywhere near overdriven, difficult to listen to cacophony or "wall of sound" type audio escapades. All the noisy goodness sits well balanced within the greater context of the dark, cavernous, slow moving soundscapes, and certainly serves the conceptual side of the endeavour.
As of this review, Nostromo has only been released on compact disc. The CD itself comes in a regular jewel case with a clear insert tray. Removing the disc reveals a slick schematic style drawing of the Nostromo as seen from the rear, and the disc itself has a similar style drawing done from a top-down perspective. There is a booklet insert with suitably dark and minimal artwork gracing its pages. On the rear cover of the booklet thanks is given to Ridley Scott (as "R. Scott") "…whose work continues to inspire."
Nostromo is an excellent exploration in experimental dark ambience, and I highly recommend Sleep Research Facility's work here: it's fucking awesome. This release gets nine and a half ears out of ten.
Interested listeners can even find "A-Deck" on YouTube (albeit, of course, with YouTube's severely compressed audio, which, in my opinion, does not quite do the piece justice, but it'll definitely give you a decent taste).
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