THE INFANT CYCLE
Posthumousness Now
2x3" CDR CEIL036
the ceiling luminated
Disc 2 1) A Mysterious Disc
2x3" CDR CEIL036
the ceiling luminated
Disc 2 1) A Mysterious Disc
I've had a real soft spot for the music of Jim DeJong and his restless and jittery approach to composition. His music is filled with a constant sense of propulsion as he uses rhythms in ways which others have seemingly not yet noticed. Married to this is his grasp of the fundamentals of a damn fine drone that can both hover and also insinuate itself into the cracks in your attention span until it establishes itself at the absolute epicentre of your awareness. But at the core of his music is a powerfully industrialised ambience that permeates through and gives the whole an addictively gritty quality.
This tiny little EP is, it seems, Jim's final word and he has chosen this opportunity to ride off into the sunset. I wish you well Jim and hope that whatever project you point yourself at next brings you joy.
-Ian Holloway
After twenty years of existence The Infant Cycle is no more. It's a bit unclear why Jim DeJong decided to call it a day, except that he found The Infant Cycle 'itself in the odd position of not existing at all'. Now there is this farewell EP with five pieces and a 'mysterious' bonus disc - which is not part of the copy I got, but maybe that's the mystery of it? The five pieces here are variations of pieces which were recently released by Zhelezobeton and Diophantine Discs, and maybe that sense of reworking, rather than doing something new, is what caused DeJong to call it a day. In these five pieces we hear his love of all things drone like, have heavily processed bass guitars, acoustic sounds and field recordings - except perhaps in 'Excedrin Ave', in which a turntable grooves around a slow rhythm. Nice, but I prefer the humming violence of 'C No. 4', which is an organ like menace. This is a nice release for sure. But am I now to say: 'I'm so sad The Infant Cycle stopped'? I am not sure about that. If energy and steam run out it's best to stop and concentrate on doing something else, I think. Maybe that time has come for The Infant Cycle, I was thinking.
-Frans de Waard
So it happens that I got an envelope with a death letter in it. Not my death, yet, but the death of The Infant Cycle, a project that is concluding 22 years of life with a strange 3" album titled Posthumousness Now. These twenty minutes are full of heavy, drowning atmosphere, eccentric rhythms and eerie drones, and they come together like a massive requiem.
The deep drones of C no 4. are overwhelming with their density and hidden textures that fold entire universes of sound inside a seven and a half minutes long wave. Excedrin Ave., on the other hand, shows a much more engaging, almost esoteric rhythm of glitches and percussion beats. Between and around them are other forms of monumental sound that is drawn from the darkest bowels of the earth. This cavernous feeling is very powerful on Hulls, for instance, which really sounds like an unsettling journey into the center of the earth.
22 years! Posthumousness now is a rewarding seal for the life of The Infant Cycle. This has always been a worthy and interesting project, and I can only hope that these final words from its creator will find their way into as many ears as possible.