- Artistic reinvention is not a momentous occasion for Kevin Martin. With at least eight performing pseudonyms lurking in his past, Martin is mercurial, at least within the boundaries of brutal, electronic music. His penchant for unexpected leaps from breakcore to power electronics, industrial hiphop, dark ambient and the world’s most unforgiving dancehall are like an enfant-terrible, jumping with a yell, out of nowhere and gleefully revelling in the mayhem they leave behind, wherever they go. If a chaotic new sound is, for him, just any other day, potentially more significant is a record released under his own name. What could convince Kevin Richard Martin to abandon his camouflage and really own his latest, head-splitting project?
Sirens, originally composed for a European festival performance back in 2015, documents -celebrates is probably not the right word- the birth of his first child. The title, as it turns out, has nothing to do with the seductive creatures of Greek mythology and instead, ominously, refers to ambulances, ICU monitors and crash carts. Most of the abstraction you’d usually find on a dark ambient record is scotched by Martin who has neatly labelled each of the fourteen numbers here in a way that chills the blood. See for example: There Is A Problem, Life Threatening Operation 2, Too Much, Loss Of Consciousness and, of course, Alarms.
The overarching approach is to take, or instrumentally recreate, something like the artificial, clinical, industrial sounds of healthcare and feed them through a wall of reverb and bass, creating a sensation of bleary-eyed, disoriented, semi-consciousness that people who have experienced hospitals or parenthood or both, will probably be familiar with.
I’m very much at home with this sort of music, no matter how oppressive, but, as I think you can hear encapsulated in the comparatively human but still urgent and unsettling xylophone line in album closer, A Bright Future, I am also glad to know though that both Kevin’s wife and little boy came through the other side of what’s depicted here. Otherwise the deeply uncomfortable sensation of voyeurism, -taking in someone else’s tragedy- would be a bit too much.
If you do partake, the crushing intensity of the lower registers is like little else you’ll hear, even in this genre. From what I read in the liner notes, that, along with a long-standing regard for Martin’s work, has more than a little to do with why fellow dark-ambient artist Lawrence English decided to release this record on his Room40 label.
Sirens catches me between conflicting sensations. On the one hand this is a deeply personal and troubling account of some of the most confronting experiences life can offer. On the other, I find this, actually, to be a very listenable record, almost too listenable, really. I guess it should be reassuring that Sirens has the capacity to unsettle, because if I came through it feeling fine, wouldn’t that be worse? Is it an issue for dark ambient fans as well? Do we imbibe these sounds for uncritical entertainment or to be constantly confronted? The answer is, probably, both; and it is the sign of an effective artist when they can achieve both of those disparate objectives. In that way, Kevin Martin has indeed chosen a significant record to attach his own name to. Significant for himself and for his listeners.
- Chris Cobcroft.