Blessed Sacrifist – Falling CDR

Bullart

Blessed Sacrifist’s latest effort Falling is a release fraught with contradictions. It’s a quiet power electronics album, filled with moments of silent sound textures, it begins with “An End” and each track contains at least 3 or 4 different tracks in itself. All this and it still only clocks in below the 30 minute mark. Is it a full length, or an EP? Only one thing is certain here and that is that Falling is one strange beast.

The opener “An End” really does feel like one. Fading in so slowly with very, very quiet textures it builds up to vocal screaming with absolutely no accompaniment. There are moments of silence in here, low drones, the echoing of field samples, a woman announcing through a loudspeaker, high-pitched beams of feedback, and wailing power electronics, but the dynamic shifts are overbearing and painfully apparent. An End immediately expresses to the listener that Falling is an album to be listened in a quiet and preferably private listening space. “From New Heights” kicks off with the drone of traffic passing by, and works into the power electronic grind much quicker only to fade out painfully slow.

“United We Stand, Divided I Fall” is the most strait-up power electronics track here. Blessed Sacrifist’s delivery of pe is competent but his versatility of including different ideas into his sound helps the overall delivery of ideas which prove to be an essential piece of Falling. Although the titles are short and to the point the tracks reflect greatly on what the titles merely suggest. Listening to falling really makes me feel like I’m going through the changes that J. Linski himself has had to endure.

The closing track, aptly titled “In Closing?” fades in an amp hum to start which, by this time in Falling makes complete sense because given what the listener has been through already there is no way to begin again but with the simplist of sound sources, electricity running through an amplification device. Working up to another wall of screeching feedback and distortion with powerful screamed vocals over everything In Closing? is a consistent end to a dynamic and subtle album.

I can compare Blessed Sacrifist’s sound closely to that of another Milwaukee local Peter J Woods or even to some New England artists like those of Sharpwaist or Karlheinz. The concepts in Falling are probably the strongest aspect with the sound created to exemplify and express the emotional changes J. Linski seems to have endured. With Falling, Blessed Sacrifist has managed to breath new air into the power electronics genre and given that this is still a relatively new project I’m looking forward to what he’s going to be doing next.

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