Lately I have been having a lot of unexplainable apocalyptic dreams, in which I awake in panic feeling helpless and humbled to a blip in time. Listening to the latest Teargas and Plateglass record takes me right back into those nightmares.
While the media buzzed about the Burial record, another dark electronic dub record may have gone unnoticed. Teargas and Plateglass have created something not to be taken lightly. Black Triage dwells in a terrifying ambiance that awakens images of destruction giving way to barren rubble, the absence of hope and the eradication of life by the unseen hand of a monolithic electronic music.
Black Triage, in its complete disregard for the expectation of a lighter side, takes every moment into the darkest depths to sort out those who can withstand the brutal reality from those who are fooling themselves. Often, a record is expected to have range, or to end with a hopeful song, but Teargas and Plateglass doesn't waver. It is demanding, constant and overpowering — so much that it may out live our own inevitable extinction.
Its steady break beats march as the drums of war, heavy piano keys thud like falling skyscrapers, and drones echo like barges in the night searching for signs of life, or unmanned sonar equipment sending out unrequited tones and bleeps. But, in the atmosphere Teargas and Plateglass have created, there is never an answer, only the sweeping, ceaseless weapon of technology consuming all in its path.
I have no explanation as to why my dreams lately have aroused paranoia of universal insignificance, but after listening to this record, I get the feeling I am not alone, which is equally comforting as it is unsettling.
