Listening Diary
Listening Diary
Oxidation
Contagious Orgasm + Θ - Island (2022)
Cassette tape
Island is a collaborative tape by Contagious Orgasm (with Hiroshi Hashimoto performing solo on this release) and Greek sound artist and experimental musician Θ. Whilst only featuring 4 tracks in total over a relatively compact 30 minutes playing time Island finds these two artists creating awesome deep soundscapes with seamless interplay between both projects resulting in some highly cinematic sonic immersion. Let’s sail to the island:
Track by track analysis
Contagious Orgasm + Θ
A1 Island
Starting off with a dark dense atmosphere we’re off to a great beginning in this first piece. Compared to other Contagious Orgasm solo and collaborative works this piece also feels rather more Dark Ambient styled. There are many different layers to this piece, the low end rumble, shifting hissy metallic sweeps, ever rising tones and even some lush Ambient pads are hidden in the mass of sound. The piece very much feels like the brittle soundtrack to an island lost in time and shrouded in black darkness.
A2 The Itch
The Itch follows soon with a more crisp sound quality and minimalist percussion, metallic sweeping noises and the sounds of water and metallic percussion. Soft hits of hiss add a great crunchy layer to the quite hi-fi sound of this piece. Compared to the first piece this is more brooding in its ambience and the low humming layers which honestly do sound a bit like snoring too have a ritual edge to them. There’s a lot of progression in this piece with a layer of a looped violin performance even entering after some time. This piece also has a somewhat more traditional melodic edge to it as whilst the sound imagery is still diffuse and dark this piece is not quite as Drone based as Island. Eventually the piece does enter that excellent soundtrack like direction which Island also moves into as thunder cracks and we can hear a weird pitched down voice saying something unintelligible.
Θ + Contagious Orgasm
B1 Island
Side B starts with the second track titled Island and while it has the same title as on side A this piece is much different from the first Island track and doesn’t sound like a rework or alternate version of that first track but rather as an independent piece. Based around a strong resonant drone and plenty of water sounds and additional squelchy effects the piece is both dark and meditative. I love the way the drone moves through various resonant frequencies in a dynamic manner as the water sounds swirl and flow over what could be a wooden ship.
B2 Temperature Difference
Temperature Difference enters soon with another drone but this one much more buzzing and clattering glassy sounds already promise us different sonic imagery. The delay effected environmental sound matter adds a great alien nature to the piece which do mirror the stereo delay effects on The Itch a bit too. Banging metallic sounds like someone hammering nails inside a submarine enter and further increase the mystery of this piece. A subtle melody accompanies the drone and the piece even gets a bit of a constant rhythmic layer within its steady drone base.
The cassette tape and digital download of this release are still available from Oxidation here:
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