{"content":[{"text":"Brainwashed - Growing, \"Diptych\"","bbox":{"left":0.076183,"top":0.013031,"width":0.301941,"height":0.019782}},{"text":"Written by Anthony D'Amico \n Sunday, 09 May 2021 00:00 - Last Updated Sunday, 16 May 2021 08:22","bbox":{"left":0.076183,"top":0.043961,"width":0.539763,"height":0.03385199999999999}},{"text":"It has been quite a long time since these shape-shifting drone stalwarts from Kranky's golden \n age last surfaced with a major release, aside from the gnarled, bass-heavy Disorder LP that \n teasingly appeared on Important back in 2017. While I am certainly happy to have them back, \n this latest release from the core duo of Joe Denardo and Kevin Doria takes a somewhat \n unexpectedly minimalist and meditative direction. I am tempted to call \n Diptych \n a \"return to form,\" but Growing have several different appealing forms they could potentially \n return to and this one arguably feels like a mis-remembered return to the pair's Kranky era, as \n these radiant slow-motion reveries pieces feel more akin to Stars of the Lid than any Growing \n album I recall. Whether that is a step in the right direction or not is hard to say, as a strong case \n could be made that project's killer run of weirder, spacier releases in 2007 & 2008 was its zenith \n and that this latest opus sands away all of the duo's distinctive quirks and sharp edges. From a \n purely artistic perspective, however, \n Diptych \n is quite an impressive achievement, as Doria and Denardo distill drone to its purest essence \n with an almost supernatural degree of control and patience.","bbox":{"left":0.071899,"top":0.24225,"width":0.8560139999999999,"height":0.29006200000000004}},{"text":"Silver Current","bbox":{"left":0.076183,"top":0.580774,"width":0.12320900000000001,"height":0.022805999999999993}},{"text":"This album initially seemed very straightforward to me, but sneakily became more and more \n interesting with repeat listens and a bit of idle reflection upon its mysteries. One such mystery \n is Growing's decision to call a three-song album Diptych, which caused me to wonder if the two \n things being referenced were Doria and Denardo or the sun and moon from the album's eclipse \n cover art. Then I realized that the eclipse provided a flawed but insightful Rosetta Stone for \n grasping the essence of this latest direction, as each piece feels like slow-motion footage of a \n mesmerizing celestial event: seemingly nothing happens for a long time, then something subtly \n rapturous begins to reveal itself. The flaw with eclipse imagery is merely that nothing here \n undergoes a particularly dramatic transformation nor is there much perceptible darkness to \n speak of (though a dissonant undercurrent does briefly appear in the closing \"Swallow Turn\"). \n Instead, these pieces feel more like solar flares blossoming from the surface of the sun in \n extremely glacial fashion. Of the three pieces, \"Swallow Turn\" is my favorite, as it is the most \n condensed and varied: it is half the length of the others, yet still feels epic and it even includes \n some bird songs and spacey synth-sounding flourishes near the end. The other two pieces","bbox":{"left":0.071899,"top":0.652042,"width":0.8486559999999999,"height":0.254428}},{"text":"1 / 2","bbox":{"left":0.885489,"top":0.952395,"width":0.026152000000000064,"height":0.015203999999999995}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}