Nic Ross is a 18 year old talented man from Whitehouse, Ohio. During his short life time he has reached a bit more than everybody from anonymous masses. He has estbalished the netlabel Modicum of Silence with (another superb musician) Kevin McCraney (they have in a liaison with the project Telemetrics), and has evolved his conceptions through the project gotikplage, and Our Subatomic Earth. First of all, His three projects have given a lot of hope regarding post rock and experimental metal that these named genres could not change into a term of abuse or the synonyme of pseudointellectual flummery. Anyway, I have heard enough about how people like to show off with the likes as Mono, and Sigur Ros as the popular and "modern" ones. Beauty and powerfulness do not mean beautiful or loud-sounding opuses in any cases, especially if it has been much exploited and fallen into decay. Such a quasi pathos is actually aversive and, unfortunately, these tracks are used to be much longer than 10 minutes. It is very sad to see/listen to how some ensembles who had co-defined the post-rock genre nearly 10 years ago lost their courage to avoid transforming into a balatron compared to their spotlights many years ago.
The music of Our Subatomic Earth is very different in comparison with the one of gotikplage. Gotikplage associates with a solid blend of post rock, progressive rock, and jazz rock. Besides sporadical massive drum works and shimmering guitar lines there are also warm-sounding analogue keyboard lines which remind me of some fusion bands of the end 70`s.
On Infinite Nic Ross continues realizing the possibilities he started evoking on the first albums (Is, and Nothing respectively). This album is as well as it supposed to be. This was fully recorded, mixed, and mastered between May and June of 2009. The music ranges from post-hardcore, post-metal and screamo attacks to soothing moments of post rock and ambient. At its loudest moments it is very noisy and acute, and its silent moments it is really a blissful vibration or filled with overflowing epicness. Despite of opposing counter sides in sound the whole is an excellent balanced one. The titles are in Latin, obviously referring to the "places" somehow related to the human state of mind, or just being the man. While I know I can`t be truth because the human soul is a way too dirty locus for this fantastic music (let`s convince in that listening to the track Palus Somni, for instance). Take time for a while to enjoy one of the most extraordinary creators in contemporary avant-rock. What else I could recommend... and listen to the other artists under Modicum of Silence, and Wise Owl Records as well, the music labels similar by sound/conception and place (Ohio State).
Download it from here
8.8
