Ezekiel Honig - Surfaces Of A Broken Marching Band

It's actually something of a surprise that Ezekiel Honig hasn't released something on Anticipate sooner than this, but Surfaces Of A Broken Marching Band does in fact mark the debut outing for the producer on this, the label he runs. Arriving as a follow-up to 2006's Scattered Practices, released on Microcosm Music, this album is conceived as the sound of a band that's been dismantled and put back together again in a different shape, with the smaller, incidental background noises taking up the foreground while the soft patter of dissolved beats seems to drift off into the middle distance. Honig's attention to detail is just staggering over the course of 'Porchside Economics', seemingly filling up acres of space with droves of delicate sonic minutiae all moving around in a carefully choreographed pattern. This is ambient music that brings together the precision engineering of a Biosphere record with the scale and emotional resonance of a Stars Of The Lid release. Elsewhere, 'Displacement' swells with vaporous drones and shuffled piano chords while 'Material Instrument 2' conjures an incredibly vivid sense of location thanks to some lively field recordings, all leant an extra gravitas by an evocative and impressionistic use of digital manipulation and submerged tones. It's hard to put your finger on exactly what makes Surfaces Of A Broken Marching Band such a freakishly good ambient record, but its success must be at least partly attributable to the immersive depth of Honig's ornate production style. Brilliant, and the sort of record you could recommend to just about anyone with an interest in electronic music... (Boomkat)


Ezekiel Honig - Surfaces Of A Broken Marching Band