Review: Infinite Particles - The Great Common Task

The record coats the floor like a liquid nitrogen carpet. I’m drawn downward – heart rate reduced, conscious mind softening until my thoughts appear like traffic lights obscured in fog. The Great Common Task is a state to be achieved through persistence, and rather than eclipsing my current universe without my consent, the sound opens up like a trapdoor beneath me; a steady amplifier hum that beckons me gently, and a request to abandon brightness and distinct edges. I am invited into the gap between two solid objects, where audio decay floats free from the attack that anchors it to action and specific instrument. There are the occasional allusions to plectrums and plucking fingers, but there is no ego behind them. Instead, I see them as petals running asymmetrically up a plant stem, or the ornamental detail upon a temple roof.

The guitar appears to me in vague outline. Delay sends ounces of defined tone into stream and cascade – a solitary moment in micro-samsaric loop. Elsewhere, warm melodies drop to the floor like orbs of light from somewhere unseen above. As time slows, I become attuned to more and more: the electricity fizzling in short bursts during “Hunting Ground”, the dead air coating the fountain drops of “Perhonen II”. My hearing drifts outward to envelop the receptors usually devoted to my other senses, and by the closing moments of the record I can taste the drones in my mouth – soft and slightly warm, oval shaped, sweet and deteriorating like over-ripe fruit.