Album Review: Blanck Mass - Blanck Mass

Let's face it, there's just something about good instrumental soundscape records that has the ability to send your mind off tangentially, transforming the mundane into something a bit more magical.
 
Blanck Mass is Benjamin John Power, one half of Bristol noise/beat combo Fuck Buttons. Recorded stealthily in the privacy of his own apartment, this self-titled debut offers up ten snippets of synth-laden soundtrack bliss. Released through Mogwai’s ever-supportive and inspirational Rock Action Records, it reveals itself as an ambient drone mammoth that's more John Carpenter than Stars of The Lid.
 
From start to finish, the whole thing has a cinematic '80s sci-fi feel to it; each upward inflection and pulsation could theoretically accompany the opening of a space shuttle’s door or a mysterious bright light waking an entire sleeping street. In fact, it’s hard to listen to Blanck Mass without indulging in some form of childlike mental role-playing. For this reason, Ragged Words has decided to formulate its thoughts on the album by listening to it on our lengthy (and very dull) walk home.
 
We spend from second track ‘Sundowner’ to the warm, glowing textures of track four, ‘Raw Deal’, shuffling through an empty park (save for a few ducks), and already there's an infectious calm to these dramatic synths. This is richly-layered and carefully-executed head music, for sure; most importantly, though, it succeeds in keeping our attention. The overall mellow flow is interrupted slightly by ‘Land Disasters’, which sees Power hint at the dirt/distortion overload Fuck Buttons are best known for. Its seven minutes are littered with waves of anthemic drone sounds that don’t sound a million miles away from John Murphy and Underworld’s score for Danny Boyle's space-horror classic Sunshine.
 
At this stage in our walk home/sci-fi epic, RW is weaving through cars while attempting to dodge unseasonal puddles of rainwater – about as humdrum as it gets, although in our head this is now as dramatic as any chase sequence. As far as we can recall, there wasn’t a scene in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey involving a man buying a bar of Milka chocolate in SPAR; had there been, however, then the late auteur would have been hard-pressed to come up with a more suitable soundtrack than the wonderful ‘Icke’s Struggle’. The trickling seaside sounds of ‘Weakling Flier’ finally see us off at our apartment door, and our interstellar journey comes to an end. Not much of a cliffhanger, we must admit...
 
But enough of this nonsense – is Blanck Mass actually any good? Well, it's the kind of listen that's ideal for the purposes of escapism, for when you just can’t handle anyone crooning in your ears or bass drums causing your foot to tap. As he’s already proven to great effect in his day job, Power has a canny way with sonic textures. Now, with this thrilling solo excursion, he proves he can lull as much as dangle the listener over the abyss.