Review: D'Incise - O esplendor natural das coisas e inferno

Gravity increases tenfold. The energy of O esplendor natural das coisas e inferno points downward. Bass frequencies press against my head like a searing sun, alternating between the hum of a dying refrigerator and the grubby churn of a construction site crane engine. I feel like someone is forcing their palms against my head and pushing down, imposing on my personal space and mobility. In the higher frequencies, water drips over me from tiny taps, wellied feet squelch upon my head and small knives are sharpened dangerously close to my earlobes; I feel blindfolded, my head wrapped in a scarf of sound or massaged with towels and nail files, my skull used as a basis around which D’Incise’s 48-minute composition can mould.

The piece was created using a set of rules, designed to prise D’Incise away from the instinctive allure of habit. As such, transitions are sudden and uncomfortable. Organ drones swerve in and out of the frame – both awkward and undeniably deliberate in how they scrape silence and return – while gas leakage, nursed metal bowls and crumpled plastic alternate and drop out. The chronology of the piece feels dizzy and creased. Sometimes there is a miraculous burst of silence from nowhere, creating these fake endings that fuck with the tradition of stillness as closure; the piece trains me to remain poised and listening even in the absence of anything to hear, only to be thrust back into the same atmosphere I’ve just departed from. There is no progression. O esplendor natural das coisas e inferno is a selection of marbles rolled round a bowl, mercurial in formation but eternally comprised of the same elements.