V/A: The Dystopian World of J​.​G​.​Ballard

Having read some of British writer J G Ballard’s work in the past, I was curious to discover what sort of dystopian world might be imagined on this compilation from Zero K, the offshoot label of Raffaele Pezzella’s Unexplained Sounds label. I had imagined this compilation might be on the noisy, gritty side with perhaps one or two sudden car-crash explosions and the sound of crunching glass. Maybe even found sound recordings playing over and over ad nauseam the news of US President John F Kennedy’s assassination as his motorcade rolled through Dallas in 1963, Hollywood actress Jayne Mansfield’s death in a car collision with a trailer truck in 1967 or the deaths of Diana Spencer and Dodi Fayed in a car crash in Paris in 1997 might feature somewhere here. The music would range from noisily industrial and urban musique concrete collages to eerie minimalism suggesting abandoned factory sites and aircraft hangars or lonely islands in the Pacific Ocean. It would be as much spiky, jerky and not always internally consistent as it would be hypnotic and bristling with menace.

Instead what we have here from eleven artists is a remarkably consistent composite sound world of dark cavernous ambience, for the most part sombre and gloomy, and tending towards a smooth and droning delivery with few surprises. While the music is good, for me it doesn’t quite come close to sketching, even in a general way, the universe of J G Ballard’s imagination. Still, if you take these tracks as they are, and forget the premise that they are meant to serve and represent, they are very atmospheric, even meditative, and though they are dark, they are not hostile or menacing and some pieces are even quite comforting in their predictability and consistency.

Perhaps the one track that comes close to what I’d hoped for is JARL’s “Labyrinth of Images”, a skittery electronic world of insect simulacra, paralleling Ballard’s investigations of simulation in novels like “Crash” or “High Rise” in which his protagonists deal with traumas or solving crimes committed by cool-headed sociopaths by replicating acts of murder, sabotage or destruction over and over. As the track continues, it becomes ever more shrill and hysterical in tone, and derangement becomes a real possibility. It really does stand out from the rest of the music which I treat as a backdrop leading up to it and then away from it as the album continues to the end.

This compilation is notable in both its consistency and lack thereof. Its 12 tracks, spanning about 75 minutes, each involve some form of gritty drone, many with shimming or lilting looped structures. But these efforts have their own unique identities that make them all part of a greater whole. Contributors include Grey Frequency, Mario Lino Stancati, JARL, Eraldo Bernocchi, HLER, Hector M. Reis, Lars Bröndum, Joel Gilardini, vÄäristymä, Mombi Yuleman, and Tarme Til Alle.

Each piece was influenced in some fashion by the writings of science fiction author J.G. Ballard. Somewhat ahead of his time, Ballard is labeled with the word “dystopian”, as his stories from 50+ years ago broached subjects that have only recently lost most of their taboo nature. He famously wrote, “The advanced societies of the future will not be governed by reason. They will be driven by irrationality, by competing systems of psychopathology.” Look around and tell me that has not already happened.

In any event, the music is enjoyable in its subtle quietness, though punctuated by rumblings and spacey themes. There is a solidly retro feel to this set, with the use of field recordings as well as analog buzz and hiss. While the majority of these undertakings might be lumped into the experimental dark ambient bucket, the pair of sound collages from Lars Bröndum stand out as having more in common with the works of Tod Dockstader for example. Other tracks fall at various places on the spectrum between ambient and musique concrete.

Once again, a stellar collection of the weird and unexpected from Zero K, an Unexplained Sounds Group label.