- For his 2012 LP on PAN as Helm, Luke Younger drew on noise and avant-garde composition for a series of experiments with found sound, prepared and broken instruments, and crumbly electronics. Silencer, his first release since Impossible Symmetry, is less fully realised, but equally intriguing, with two five-minute tracks bracketing two pieces twice as long.
Though Helm hints at noisy chaos, the tracks are restrained rather than punishing. The mechanical scrapes, metallic clanks and discordant synth tones on "Silencer" bleed into one another, making it difficult to identify where one sound begins and another ends. A lonely kick drum underpins an ominous foghorn on "Mirrored Palms," and on "Bergamo" trebly drones and moody toms poke through the thick murk. The fog clears a little for "The Haze," whose fluttering percussion and battered samples hint at rather than describe an untold horror. Tracks froth in their own sonic worlds rather than progressing, but that's the point; tension rather than brutality is Younger's weapon, and he wields it extremely effectively.
Tracklist A1 Silencer
A2 Mirrored Palms
B1 Bergamo
B2 The Haze