Symbol
Online Architecture

LA RECENSIONE

Symbol is a musical project by Christopher Royal King (a wonderful name, by the way), already known as the guitarist and composer in the post-rock band This Will Destroy You. This album has little to nothing in common with the sound the group adopted in the first half of their career. However, it certainly sparked some ideas that later influenced the subsequent works of This Will Destroy You, who wanted to break away from the constant comparisons with other artists in the genre, including Explosions In The Sky.

The six tracks of "Online Architecture" are all instrumental. They range from dark and contemplative passages to sound experiments that seem to have a life of their own. The songs on the album seem to me half compositions and half evolutions left entirely to the interactions between the various instruments and samples used. Oscillations, harmonic frequencies that seem to arise from nowhere, and looping melodies with an almost oriental flavor. A bit like looking through a blurred lens, it's hard to determine which instruments have been sampled, as everything is covered by a veil of saturation and imperfections, like those of a cassette that has been forgotten in a damp basement for decades. The formula might recall the beginnings of artists like Boards of Canada, but here we're talking about an even more minimalist and sparse project, if possible. There's a depth that transforms, like a submarine that keeps descending toward the bottom of the darkest abyss. Sometimes you see something, maybe the reflection of a luminous underwater creature, or perhaps just an hallucination.