Bleep

The prospect of Blanck Mass scoring a film is a mightily curious one. The electronic music made by Benjamin Power under the Blanck Mass moniker is generally so intense, so utterly overwhelming, that it negates your ability to focus on any other task. How, then, will Power manage to maintain an air of inimitable production when he is composing work that is specifically designed to accompany something else - in this case the on-screen action of Nick Rowland’s Calm With Horses?

The answer, it would appear, is to channel the project’s black-hearted rage away from rhythm and into texture. Whereas Blanck Mass LPs like Animated Violence Mild blast the listener with unrelenting drum tracks, on Calm With Horses we find droning synths swelling ominously in a manner similar to John Carpenter’s most celebrated scoring work. Often these tones are offset by some eerily beautiful, almost choral keyboard sounds, something which emphasises the ominous feeling that pervades Calm With Horses. However, rarely do we find drums pushed to the fore here - only the merciless techno slam of ‘Different Breed’ veers close to Blanck Mass of old.

While Calm With Horses is certainly an intense listen, this isn’t to say that the album is devoid of light. Tracks like ‘Descent’ and ‘Loyal Skins’ are simply quite beautiful - particularly the latter, a fugged reverie in which the Nine Inch Nails and Angelo Badalamenti influences that lurk at the back of other Blanck Mass records become more prominent.

Calm With Horses, the first film score from Benjamin Power’s Blanck Mass project, expands the notion of what a Blanck Mass album can be.