ARTIST:
> 21 Gramms
ALBUM:
> Drown
GENRE:
> Dark Ambient / Industrial / Soundtrack
PUBLISHER:
> Witte Dood Records
YEAR:
> 2009
FORMAT:
> 3" CDR
TOTAL PLAYTIME:
> 5:33
[01]Drown
AUTHOR:
> M
21 Gramms is a Polish one-man project of Filip Szyszkowski, and this is (to my understanding) his fourth release. I haven't heard any of his other works, but the style presented on this release is soundtrack-like dark ambient with elements from industrial and drone.
The song starts almost explodingly with a slowish and slightly metallic drone that slowly starts to lose it's volume right after it's loud beginning, until it's fade-out at two minutes. At one minute, a really eerie and gentle short melody starts repeating over the drone, creating a beautifully haunting soundscape. The melody lasts for a minute, and at it's end another, way simpler but equally haunting melody with similar sounds (meaning something like a softened piano) takes it's place for a while. This melody is backed by some slow and soft metallic screeches of sorts, and they just keep on going after the melody ends, too. The soundscape becomes more fragile by the minute, as these screeches start to slowly fade and some damp, soft and low beats appear in the background together with some distant metallic drone. At the end, the beats are the only thing that can be heard, and soon even they are gone.
Despite the song having a rather simple structure composition-wise, it works like a disease. The song's title gets you a long way here; it is as if you were slowly sinking, passing various layers of different sounds and lightless colours, and all of them slowly fade towards the inevitable end. The atmosphere stays haunting throughout the whole journey, it just gets more peaceful and relaxed the closer you get to the 5:33.
The artist truly succeeded in creating both musically and thematically fitting and unified soundscape. There's a good amount of variation, and even though the changes in the soundscape are very noticeable at times, they're executed so that they don't draw your attention in a negative way; you just softly slide from one soundscape to another. The volume of the release gets slowly lower all the way to the end, and to my surprise this works really well; the more gentle and silent sounds in the end get all your attention because the soundscape is so captivating. One might not even really notice how concentrated s/he is on the release until it's over.
So what are the downsides? Well, there really aren't many aside from the dull, unimaginative and not too fitting cover arts. The differend sounds are well tied together, and the whole is captivating and has a personal sound. It's still true that the release is only 5:33 in lenght, so it's really up to you if you want to lower the release's grade due to having to pay 2 euros + sending costs for less than six minutes of music. In my opinion, this soundtrack for drowning is well worth it.