Moritz von Oswald - Silencio

On this latest long-player, Berlin don Moritz von Oswald explores the intersection of the human and the artificial, and in doing so hits very directly upon a theme he's been exploring one way or another for much of his career. Not so much the ghost as the human in the machine. If it doesn't sound exactly like Basic Channel, then it's imbued with the same spirit of time-distorting minimalism. The point of difference and conceptual anchor of Silencio is the introduction of a 16 person vocal choir, which Oswald bends into ominous gothic drones that intermittently sit above or below cavernous, dub-heavy soundscapes that veer between the industrial and the minimal. Club-as-church undertones notwithstanding, the addition of choral singing makes for a supremely grandiose flourish, ominous, elemental, outright HEAVY. There's no mistaking that the human voice, in low register harmony, is a potent physical force. Importantly, it doesn't dominate proceedings either, more a chest-impacting contrast that allows Oswald to further explore his sonic range. And honestly, the portentous grace of the title track opener hits as hard as any this year. A blackest ever black kind of affair, or to put it another way, music that sounds like it's been night all life long.