Quality instrumental-based industrial music is in short supply these days, which makes Soliloquy // A Body Knows a modern gem. As one can glean from the sublime artwork of Fabrizio Nisi, the music is suffused with an aura of darkness steeped in the human condition. Anguish is palpable in the image and the grooves. The tension between human and machine, feeling and formula is clearly delineated. Unfolding in two parts, Sheeba exp.‘s album traces the path of emotional disruption from thought to the nervous system, using harsh electronics to mirror the symptoms and melodic passages to battle feelings of dehumanization. The body may keep the score, but this is the sound of how trauma feels.
The initial sounds sound like a combination of clock and steam engine. The clock soon stops ticking, resumes and stops again. Meanwhile an electronic storm rises in the background like neurons firing, attempting to understand the disruption. Voices are buried in the morass, either live dialogue or television, like nagging memories just out of reach. Dig deeper and one hears the sound of children screaming on a rollercoaster, the memory made specific, the emotional attachment clear. The memory is playing on a loop, tumbling in the mind. “Paradise Lost” begins in benign fashion, its peaceful piano an anchor until the midpoint, when a barrage of beats disrupts the reverie. Still, the synth implies that the sufferer is holding on, while the swift appearance of harp at the end solidifies the celestial connection.
“Again, and again, and again” raises the tempo and offers an impression that collapse is imminent. The piano returns like a caretaker with a plate of food, a beverage and some medicine. The track fades into a narcotic oblivion, leading to the ambient “Respite,” an oasis at the center of the set. Even this turns out to be an illusion. The most powerful piece follows in its wake, itself a tale of two halves. Honoring its title, “Rupture” launches with a darkening of timbres, a child’s cry and the sudden excision of the ambient comfort. Dark tones descend, paving way for Soliloquy // A Body Knows’ most industrial sequence, whose early percussion sounds like gunshots and whose later percussion sounds like bombs. By “Disembody,” the cover makes complete sense.
As the piano reenters, it provides less consolation than before, like kindly spoken but ineffective words. The impression is that somewhere things are all right, but not here, and while there may be love here, there is not love enough. The greatest distortions appear in the subsequent piece, the mind now occluded, the body feeling the effects. In “Wounded Ground,” the beats travel speaker-to-speaker, the sufferer wracked from within and without. The beats become burgeoning, leading to distorted vocalizations, a Skinny Puppy-esque railing.
“Void Talk” is left to pick up the pieces, like the changing of sheets after the passing of a loved one; there’s little consolation in the transition back to a smoother voice, but “little” does not mean “no.” In the aftermath of trauma, sometimes a modicum of hope is the only encouragement that one can accept. (Richard Allen)
