Morphing deeper into the cyber-techno vortex, NYC’s Hiro Kone gives animus to wrecking ball kick drums, body-scanning synths and atavistic choral pads in a thrilling new album for Dais.
With ‘A Fossil Begins to Bray’ Hiro leads farther into a void between modular synthesis, field recordings and noise following 2018’s cultishly prized ‘Pure Expenditure’ LP and her roiling collab with Drew McDowell (Coil). As the title suggests, Hiro’s new album is intently focussed on the idea of giving a primal, anthropomorphic voice to ancient, even pre-historic, spirits and creatures. This idea provides a thoroughly compelling lense thru which to frame her music, which is at once contemporary and futuristic in its technical make-up, while speaking to instinctive sixth senses, muscle memories and notions of the uncanny valley.
Flooding the synapses with serotonin-lush pads and unheimlich, crawling rhythms in opener ‘A Desire, Nameless’, Hiro’s technical chicanery leads into pensile megastructures with ‘fabrication of Silence’ and shiveringly dark, primordial space stretched out between waning subbass and her creaking violin strings on the title track. ’Shatter The Gangue Of Piety’ follows, carving an elemental techno truth from syncopated drums and surging pad, and the cinematic themes of ’Submerged Dragon’ and ‘Iahklu’ divine a timeless dread that resolves in the action of muscle memory in her restless techno impulses on ‘Feed My Ancestors.’
