Written by: ZRG
Artist Link
Country: 
Label: Looney-Tick Productions
Genre: Experimental/field Recordings/Avantgarde/Drone
Tracklisting:
1 – 01 Double Dose Of Drops
1 – 02 CONNECT, I CUT
1 – 03 Illumination-Implosion (FXs Mix)
1 – 04 God, Mér, No No Gend
1 – 05 Interlude
1 – 06 Organ Tunnel With Trash Cans
1 – 07 (hidden track)
2 – 01 Cloud 74
2 – 02 COLIMBLI SPACE
2 – 03 The Garrett Queen Vocals – Doriandra Smith
2 – 04 Widow Gray Shit
2 – 05 Forced Ellethere
2 – 06 They Loop Us (Medical Paranoia)
2 – 07 Help The Feeble Minded
Cities of the Red Lights is the fifth album from the Italian experimental project Dani Alvo, aka Testing Vault on his new label Looney – Tick Productions. Preceded by a download ep – Connect, I Cut and complimented my Italian live dates, and represents a 2 cd journey for TV dedicated to Rozz Williams, William Burroughs, Angus Maclise, Ira Cohen and Coil, with strong dream machine usage that inspired the album’s lyrical content.
Disc One – Forced Ellethere – Or Locked Groove(l)s-imilia Of Strings For Shooting Ghosts Down features a lot more of Dani as a vocalist for Testing Vault and less vocal contributions from other artists other than one by Doriandra Smith of EXP. Double Dose of Drops opens the album with some uneasy listening of a piano and warped vocals that wrap themselves around the piano loop, with blips patterned into the entire structure of the song. CONNECT I CUT gives a deceptively delicate sound before gliding into a deep dreamlike ambience punctuated by vocal and hollering booms of synth. CONNECT I CUT revels in a far more expansive ambience than before, it’s not just dark but successfully dreamlike, conceptually backing the dream influenced vocal well. Illumination-Implosion (FXs Mix) revels in a textured field recording like creepiness and repeated vocal. God, Maman Mére, No No Gend is a successful instrumental juxtaposition of field recordings morphing into Interlude onto Organ Tunnel With Trash Cans an ambient passage that is successfully complex, yet simple ambient music made with a combination of guitar, violin, TV and radio. The hidden track on disc one provides a longer workout from Testing Vault building dreamlike soundscapes to compliment a dictatory sharp vocal that gets put through the mangler trying to remold the vocal to new forms.
Disc Two – Deeper and Deeper We Went In My Amigdala begins with mad instrumental noises looped over drones and it’s this meditative work that makes me realise that this disc is a different record to Or Locked Grove(l). You have to step back and look at Dani as an artist, there have been several side projects, Jerusalem Crickets, Whitechapel Street and Citizen Insane, that have all incorporated radically different methods than those used by TV. Testing Vault has always remained the constant project that’s developed and morphed over the last 10 years. But within this disc it becomes evident that the methods of these projects like the deep down bass of Citizen Insane (http://www.myspace.com/citizeninsanedub ) ended up working their way into TV, certainly in Phantasmagoria, Dani as vocalist in Whitechapel Street has moved through gradually and on Cities of the Red Lights fully. The early creaky cranky early twentieth century early Testing Vault instrumentals reappear in The Garret Queen which is vocalised beautifully by Dorriandra Serena Smith of Crows Cloth and EXP fame. This serves as an updated and improved look back at earlier TV methods. Colimbli Space obsesses at length over what is essentially two separate soundscapes placed together beautifully. They Loop Us combines vocal and blasts of noise to good effect. Essentially Dani as a vocalist is warped into TV’s sound well, but on the final track Help the Feeble Minded Dani has a vocal flipout for over 8 minutes and the voice becomes an instrument working with chimes leading me to a conclusion.
Testing Vault is consistently good, go and buy anything and you won’t be disappointed. But here Dani has stepped out of his safety net in a few ways. Testing Vault is usually edited down well to suit the album or ep format, but here he has stretched Testing Vault over two discs and it’s all good, but doing so much has incorporated other sources old and new into the whole equation of TV and forced numerous developments in one album. The abstraction in TV is at it’s most effective on Help the Feeble Minded, the incoherent vocalisation is like an unburdening, stepping away from the English language collapses the structures of influence of TV and goes from good to great, it’s done at various points on the album, but never better than this, Cities of the Red Light’s final track. Is Italian language a strong way forward?
In short when Testing Vault breaks down its’ own sound better things always emerge as witnessed on Cities of the Red Light.
Rating: 4/5
