The work of producer Hiro Kone (Nicky Mao) is reliably muscular and haptic. Over several releases Mao has shown talent and consistency. A Fossil Begins to Bray finds Mao transformed but intact. It builds on foundations set by its predecessors, but neither betrays nor leaves them in the dust.
As suggested by its title, the album bursts from stolid and intermittent silences. Life erupts from nowhere. Wobbly rhythms, bright synth work and a menacing low end scream into being; relics rendered animate.
The title track of A Fossil Begins to Bray forms like an organism emerging from primordial soup. From stuttering silence and calm, the track blossoms into a cacophonous roar. It builds to an abrupt cut, a story suddenly swiped from the table. In a few minutes, Mao manages a wordless evocation of a species’ span on the planet.
‘Akoluthic Phase’ has a similar structure. What begins akin to Eduard Artemyev’s mysterious work for Tarkovsky heaves out of the sea and sprouts a propulsive, powerline-twang of a bassline. Its pensive mode accelerates into danger and fierce action.
It’s impressive how often Mao repeats this trick in different ways. A standout is ‘Shatter the Gangue of Piety’, a lurching epic peppered with inhuman signs and industrial clanging. It’s the most monstrous track here: like Depeche Mode but fracked, blasted into deconstruction and drained of black blood.
Mao’s M.O. appears to be a rejection of modernity and accelerationism; an ode to quiet and to hesitance. It’s not some Luddite manifesto — more a work which tenders reflection on the structures which support us. The weight of history held in our future.
The most overt example of this is ‘Submerged Dragons’, a transitory minimalist track which lapses into frequent silence. It is filled with tension; a penny awaiting the drop. What a friend of mine would call ‘silence so loud you want to turn it up’. This track and its peers are something to ring the ears with more than once.
Hiro Kone’s A Fossil Begins to Bray is available for stream and purchase here.
Words by Andrew O’Keefe