"They Sound Like They're Dying", the latest work from Lilac Numbering System, takes the concept of death and runs with it, producing a searching collection that is at once both settling and unsettling. The three pieces on the album are long, seemingly improvised stretches of performance art that cosplay as music, all recorded on a cell phone. It was never meant to be pretty.
You can hear musicians playing in the room next door. Hey, shouldn't those guys get writing credits? They don't; those credits belong exclusively to Texas-based artist John Wilkins (save for the mastering by James Plotkin). Wilkin's work is performative and spacious. That is, he likes to create space for himself to express and perform. This space is achieved with wailing guitar notes and "a homemade noise contraption run through an aging Orange amp." The sustained notes are decorated with delayed, woozy notes, and various samples and sounds (is that a can opening on "Vociferen"?) The effect is at times disorienting, and the work is rarely musical. There is music here, but, as the title suggests, it is in the midst of decomposing. The siren screams of "Dransariana" are what one imagines playing over the loudspeakers at the apocalypse.
★★★