This is certainly one seriously expansive package: an LP housed in a gatefold sleeve, containing an extended score is accompanied by a DVD of the film, an inner sleeve with a monograph by American Media scholar Jeffrey Sconce and download coupons for HD audio and video and even an option to upgrade to a Blu-Ray version of the visuals. Multimedia artists and fans have never had it better.
Sonically, ‘Strange Lines and Distances’ is an interesting work: skittering pink noise crackles, splutters and cascades like rain before a barely-there note hangs in the air while a gyroscopic grating hovers and undulates across the two tracks, which run for 21 and 17 minutes respectively.
The second track begins as though nothing music is going to happen, and the first few minutes are entirely unobtrusive, until a crackle of noise becomes discernible and builds to a wall of brain-melting distortion. The mellow chords continue to hover subtly in the background, immersed by thee blistering white noise. It’s reminiscent of ‘Cocaine Death’ era Prurient.
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The visuals aren’t exactly dramatic, compiling still images of moody landscapes and the like in a slide-show, although viewing the ‘split screen’ version, accompanied by the audio track, is quite a challenging prospect, and certainly not without merit.
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