Claustrophobic cocoons emerge from dark grey landscapes as HEXA’s Material Interstices fixes its gaze toward the burning horizon. The duo of Jamie Stewart and Lawrence English is built from shaded contours and broken pieces, honed with intention into a desolate, solid mass. Material Interstices moves slow, as of dragging the weight of a thousand dead suns, making each scarred element ever more potent. Levity has no place here; everything belongs to the black mud.
Stewart and English have a psychic connection. Crafting something so singular and massive where it is impossible to discern where one voice ends and the other begins, especially from a distance, is impressive. Crawling through the blurred mechanical corridors of Material Interstices, is a dread, like being lost in a dream and fighting against the coming dawn. “Tending Concrete Flesh” sizzles with tension, a solid river of sound flowing out of hiss factories, imbued with sinister echoes and whirring oscillations spewing dread. It’s heavy in every way.
The mind races, “Hallucination Liturgy” growing stronger beneath caustic aural ruins, nightmares becoming daydreams as the drones rise higher. Something is trying to escape from the dissonant char, a distant shimmer whispering a siren song in the roiling cadences of “Elastic Body.” Textures build in layers, becoming intricate yet muddled masses of sound that have discrete focus. Stewart and English are masterful with the dynamic progression of these pieces, showing mountains of restraint but also letting the music run at a moment’s notice.
“Love, Colder Than Death” brings this howling masterpiece to a cold, quiet close. Intensity spikes early before dissolving into plumes of dust hanging in the frosty air. The machines are finally ready to loosen their grip and sleep. Material Interstices falls headfirst into the darkness to find deliverance, though ultimately is weighed down in the industrial dissolution of our emotional machinations. HEXA is a suffocating embrace.
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