Disquiet

The monohm.com netlabel offers little in the way of context for its releases, less than a handful of terms, tags really, for each of its freely downloadable sets of music. Take its most recent entry, Post Zero, credited to Drumlake, which is tagged “clicks,” “tones” and “drones.” Speaking categorically, tags are more useful, more truthful, than are genres; it’s more helpful, for example, to say that Boxhead Ensemble is “ambient” and “country” than to choose between the two, but those three Drumlake descriptors, as monohm tags its tags, don’t do much justice to the oddly lifelike gurglings of “Hulverhead,” which sounds like the world’s first sentient Jew’s harp moaning about how lonely life can be (MP3), or to the lushly sustained drone-hum of “Circle of Hills” (MP3), in which clicks are so minimal, barely surface noise, to even really register. And “Abram Cove,” the most widely ranging of the three Post Zero tracks, sounds like the audiolog of a journey through some subterranean maze (MP3). Sometimes descriptors aren’t enough; a map would be appreciated. The meanderings of “Abram Cove” are suggestive enough to make you want to draw your own.

By Marc Weidenbaum