Set Fire To Flames

Set Fire To Flames consist of a large handful of Canadian sonic/musical artistes. As with their previous effort, they set up shop in a particular environment (this time a barn in rural Ontario) and leave the tape rolling, while allowing themselves to be taken over by intense sleep deprivation and channelling their experiences and observations through playing and not playing instruments — and eventually constructing/mixing the heap of recordings after the fact in another environment. It’s like an experiment in the concept of process — various stages of development and creation are maximised, and in postmodern fashion, re-experienced yet again and manipulated from that experience and on and on. Disc one, which has a great depth of field capturing of silence and ambience, has an abrupt quality to it — the feeling of uncertainty prevails throughout, shifting from documentaries of sound to cinematically subjective compositions. Frightening creaking chairs, wary violins and atonal guitars sound ancient and extraterrestrial, and completely disorient the listener as to what time of day it is. Disc two comes across more like the come down from a severe period of intoxication, where one begins (sparingly) to submit to and make sense of chaos in unique ways, though mainly through some interesting percussive journeys. TIN/MTIS could very well make the feeling of uneasiness seem like a walk in the park, or, teach the listener a lesson in paying more attention to their environments at all times, as everything, living or non, has something to offer.