A Study in Solitude

Josh Graham seems like an artist who opts, in lieu of sleeping, to dream out loud. For real, though: the size and scope of his visual art portfolio alone is staggering. Under the Suspended in Light banner, he’s directed music videos for the likes of Isis, Underoath and Dillinger Escape Plan, created album art and merchandise for Neurosis, Chris Cornell and Jesu and produced concert visuals for Mastodon, Sleep, Drake and Jay Z. Oh, and he’s currently the creative director for Soundgarden.

But that’s just a snowflake on the tip of the iceberg. In 2003, when he began working with members of Isis as Red Sparowes, he became as active musically as he is artistically. A Storm of Light – his post-metal ternt industrial-doom main squeeze – has released four LPs since 2008, and he’s produced them all. And naturally, he’s done all the artwork, directed the music videos and programmed the concert visuals, as well. He’s like Buzz and Mackie Osborne rolled into one (minus the signature hairstyles, of course).

Colony, the debut release from Graham’s dark ambient project IIVII (pronounced ‘īvē), is his most self-contained work to date. Set aside mastering, Graham wears every hat for this release. Composer, performer, producer, designer, video director… it’s almost shocking that he incorporated images from the Cassini probe rather than go into space to get them himself. Fitting, then, that Colony is a study in solipsism; a loose concept album (Graham appropriately calls it “ambient fiction”) about being stranded, whether by mandate or choice, somewhere in deep space.

Tonally, Colony is more desolate than 2001, Gravity and Moon combined, in that the only companionship the main character seems to have comes in the form of arbitrary radio transmissions from their home planet (“Transmissions From Home,” “Transmissions Illumine”). There are no human companions or phantoms thereof. No Ash or Bishop. No HAL, GERTY, TARS or CASE. Apart from a supermassive black hole (“On the Shores of Markarian 335”), there is only the protagonist, an empty colony of unspecified vastness and light years of echoes. And the pièce de résistance: Graham does a fantastic job of putting the listener in the aforementioned protagonist’s helmet, making for a hell of an isolation tank soundtrack.

For the most part, this record uses just the right sounds and takes just the right amount of time to tell its story. The eleven minute opener, “Transmissions From Home,” sounds like the work of a master foley artist, slowly building on a galactic heartbeat with swelling square waves, bowed metal, wind chimes, synth brass and distant (read: measured in astronomical units) police sirens before sharply plucked guitar harmonics, crisp saw waves and Darth Vader-esque exhalations introduce the piece’s ultimate tone of vague menace and despair. And rather than fizzle out on that note, the composition culminates in a thunderous, buzzing finale that would feel perfectly at home in the grandest, most suspenseful sequences of Interstellar.

In putting the listener into his lone colonist’s headspace, Graham recalls Eno (“Colliding Horizons”), classic horror soundtracks (“Transmissions Illumine”) and even Daft Punk’s underappreciated Tron: Legacy soundtrack (“Black Galaxy”) while still carving out his own space in the electronic realm. And though a couple of tracks outlive their charm by a minute or two (“Shaping Itself From Dust” sounds a little like Bowie’s “Subterraneans” sans detail, and as such should probably be a bit shorter), the story told by Colony is (like Graham’s gorgeous cover art) vividly illustrated and thoroughly captivating.

Overall, IIVII is Josh Graham’s most idiosyncratic project yet, despite its dissimilarity to anything he’s done in the past. Perhaps his prolific metal career was just a path to his ultimate existence as a weaver of ambient fiction. Perhaps Colony is his Swordfishtrombones, his Nite Flights, or – perhaps a bit more on the nose – his Ambient 1. Or perhaps he’s just cracking his knuckles between ASOL records. Probably the latter. In any case, here’s hoping this engaging nugget of headphones music isn’t just a one-time thing.