Adaptation And Survival

Tribes of Neurot, the noise/ambient offshoot of Neurosis, have released their share of exciting, experimental projects, and Adaption & Survival may be the most brilliantly conceived of all of them. When Tribes of Neurot released Grace, an electronic/ambient companion disc designed to be played simultaneously with Neurosis' Times of Grace album for an enhanced listening experience, it was considered to be a somewhat revolutionary idea, and Adaption & Survival considerably expands upon it. Here, the group's members compiled a library of insect noises, distorting, synthesizing, and manipulating the recordings into bizarre, buzzing noise-scapes and eventually editing them into six individual, untitled tracks. While the concept of ambient music derived from insect sounds is fascinating by itself -- if met with a collective head-scratching from all but a small handful of the record-buying public -- it's the context that makes Adaption & Survival so compelling: The tracks were recorded on 5," 7," and 10" records, which were meant to be mixed by the listener into a unique, personal interpretation of the sounds using multiple turntables set at different speeds. While executing the project is at best impractical, its ingenuity is impressive, asking for more involvement from the listener than relatively passive listening. ~ John Serba|