Boisterous but bloated
Diminuendo is Daniel Avery’s third EP of 2018, coming after Slow Fade and Projector, and serves as an add-on to this year’s Song for Alpha album. While Avery took a more ambient direction in Song for Alpha and this year’s earlier EPs, Diminuendo offers a more industrial and energetic sound that, while exciting on first listen, lacks a greater impact and grows repetitive as time goes on, even with a standout track.
The seven-minute title track, having been previously released on Song for Alpha, blends in with the more energetic work found on this EP and the minimalist direction its original album went as well. While the rest of Song for Alpha is subdued and nuanced, this track offers a punch that sets the tone for the rest of the EP, maintaining a steady pace with warps and bass drums that sees some rise in energy with hi-hats and claps before reaching a state of turmoil and taking a less hectic direction to finish the song. The EP also features a condensed version of the track, which manages to work with the more fast-paced direction of this EP.
Avery also explores and takes influence from other genres, with acid-line taking main stage in “Hyper Detail.” This is the standout track on the Diminuendo EP, and features a fast-paced, chaotic riff line that only enhances the experience and increases in intensity in its relatively short runtime of 4:33. While this track may be the best on the EP as a whole, it definitely raises the bar for the other songs and makes even “Diminuendo” pale in comparison.
“Light of Falling Rain” is one of Avery’s most abrasive tracks in recent memory and builds up in its abrasive quality with high-pitched digitized screeches laid over a basic hi-hat drum beat and low-frequency reverbs that grow more prominent and add some form of deviation and contrast, before some of the song’s more “experimental” moments, which is added distortion to the song’s main riff before ending anti-climactically and abruptly. For a song that begins so strongly and begins as an excellent follow-up to the previous track, there’s no sonic progression throughout the track to keep listeners hooked in for three minutes, let alone six-and-a-half.
Distorted vocals and warped reverbs are the main features in “Time Marked Its Irregular Pulse In Her Eyes,” which brings the EP to an unpleasant and lackluster finish. While the closing track may be the most ambient of the four tracks and serve as Avery’s attempt to finish off this relatively high-octane set of tracks with something more chilling and reminiscent of his normal line of work, the distortion and reverbs don’t mesh well together as one would hope. The warped vocals come off as underdeveloped and sound oddly similar to the title character from WALL-E; this alone makes the closing track lose a lot of its impact on initial listen.
For a 21-minute EP, where every minute matters to the listener, to not maintain a sense of excitement all the way throughout leaves a sour note on Avery’s resume. While “Diminuendo” worked better on Song for Alpha, where it served as an out-of-the-blue, but fantastic, break from the ambient techno, it wasn’t able to hold up on its own as the centerpiece to this EP.
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