"Post-apocalyptic
noir soundtrack jazz. Imagine pop rivets in a willow pattern soup
tureen, a New York license plate washed up in the Burmese delta,
Charlie Parker as a short order chef in an Alice Springs service
station, lizards on a dead farmhand and waiting in line behind a
Belgian social worker reading Bukowski."
Belle Atmos is a London based collective whose industrial cinematic
sound is as enervating as it is unnerving.
Their debut EP and DVD capture the tense structures and dark
melodies that describe the Lynchian spirit of violent beauty, white
noise consciousness
and transcendence.
Belle Atmos channel the angry voice of fading celluloid and
obsolescent machines, whose crackle and hiss give a sharp form to
the background noise of the
electronic politic.
Bone shattering polyrhythmic breaks
devolve into monotheistic Krautrock to soar above the junkyard of
samples chosen with random precision from the 21st
century cultural wasteland. Yet within this dystopic vision lies a
beauty; strings and orchestral touches take musical queues from the
magical architectures of Kraftwerk, Penguin Café Orchestra, David
Sylvian, and Debussy. The genius of Belle Atmos isn’t in its
juxtaposition of contrasts but in the totality of its audio
sculpture.
Integral to the experience of
Belle Atmos is Alex May’s ground-breaking synaesethic visuals which
riff heavy on themes of elemental industry, human machines, and
natural processes.
