Black Polygons: “Empire”
Paris’ Black Polygons crafts close-set, yet bleak sound textures of alternately startlingly crisp and densely noisey guitar and synth that seem plucked from the most daunting nights of winter. Sounds familiar/daunting, no? Well don’t be fooled. Rather than stretching out a theme by exploiting variations of a certain sonic pallet or slowly adding elements in order to build to a crescendo, he is content to establish a mood and pack on to the next track. While each song, the longest of which is an intentionally aberrant outro clocking in at 3:32, stands well enough on its own, this measured and restrained approach makes this self-titled release feel almost cinematic, with each short piece functioning as a vignette; making a brief but complex statement; iterating a mood, before flowing into the next. It’s a strange effect and something that many much longer, self-contained tracks have difficulty achieving. Give the delayed guitar miasma of “Empire” a listen, then explore the rest of this intriguing album.
You can hear the rest of Black Polygon’s self-titled release on Bandcamp
Written by Luke Carrell
