Harmless Noise

A year ago I got a tip to check out some music on a Soundcloud account and found a collection of tracks that were unlike anything else around. There was very little information about the creator bar Galway, Ireland. Since then I’ve followed everything Twomilliondays does and tried to write up as regularly as I could keep up with it. Until now.

Taken from demo states on Soundcloud and re-recorded over 11/12 January for release as an eponymous album, I’ve been soaking up these songs for a month without even trying to review or formulate my own impressions. Just didn’t want to burden them with thoughts because I waited a long time to hear a concrete body of work from Paul Fallon, the man behind twomilliondays, and didn’t want to merely hop on this as an exercise in continuity, just to carry on the posts that already featured on HN. That’s what gives bloggers the bullshit ‘cheerleader’ tag. So while the sounds disseminated into pockets and pools of preference in my head, I also hoped that maybe some other people out there might pick up on this album of their own accord. It’s a pretty low-key release in fairness but unfortunately, I haven’t heard much about it…yet.

Because you will hear more about Twomilliondays. As far as quality goes, it’s not often that a debut comes executed to such a high calibre unless the artists involved hold their work up to the light of the music they themselves enjoy, and constantly strive to reach a similar level. It’s not electronica in the purist sense but for all the instrumentation, veers away from post-rock. There are nonconformist devices at work in the conceptualisation and arrangement of this music to relish, evoking a wondrous sense of discomfort, pillowsoft ideas rammed into an electronic cannon that forces out heavenly missiles at the speed of sound.

Every single song can be picked apart and praised for completeness, commencing with the gliding Float, leading towards Inversion‘s stellar strut to the formless power of Solfeggio, soothed by Organum‘s rebounding guitar and the trippiness of Tertiary. The big one is Arcanum, a jarring, looping tour de force that works on the pleasure of progression, building without ever having to justify itself with anything so gauche as a crescendo. Assured, conditioned and enthralling, there are songs here to please the staunchest fans of Aphex Twin’s malevolence, the jitter of Autechre, Boards Of Canada’s warm enigmas or Fennesz’s guitar modulation and more with most influences too subtle and fleeting to pin down.

And while many records are front-loaded to yoke the impatient listener’s attention at once, TMD seems to have little interest in such unsophisticated pursuits. Unalloyed value at just €5 for 10 tracks, there will be no begging or coercion for your patronage from this artist. But for those who don’t concern themselves with the ‘I pressed play, now, impress me’ approach to new music, there’s a journey within that seems set to never end for as long as the horizons broaden further out of reach with every listen.

twomilliondays.bandcamp.com

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