Ayers, Everall, Harris: Mesmeric Enabling Device Ayers, Everall, Harris: Mesmeric Enabling Device (Soleilmoon Recordings - 1999) Nigel Ayers (Nocturnal Emissions), John Everall (Sentrax Records) and Mick Harris (Scorn, Lull, et al.) have joined their considerable forces to build their newest dark ambient creation; in a listening niche which hasn't been explored so much lately, the output of their Mesmeric Enabling Device is a most welcome flow of drear. Deeply shadowed textures dredged from some subterranean pool of darkness will color your world in perfectly oppressive grayness. (Yes, that's a good thing!) The opening and closing tracks were constructed by Everall and Harris using source material provided by Ayers. (The five middle tracks are vice versa, with Ayers reworking Everall and Harris' contributions.) The 18-minute-long Part 1 groans and buzzes with low, almost-foghornish growls penetrating the sweltering murk. As with the following tracks, the listener is engulfed in an unnaturally churning atmosphere of hauntingly strange soundwaves. Hushed, though thickly brooding, Part 2 pulses from within a self-generating fogbank. More than halfway through, a faint shade of some medieval-sounding melody is heard, the only "music" to be found here, and still yet teasingly unattainable. Part 3 (0:19) is an extremely brief electro-mechanical grind touched by a single glint of feedback. The soft, subsonic bass murmers of Part 4 are bolstered by scattershot rhythmic patter, slow percussive glitches and, more rarely, by muted organ-like bursts, resulting in a mutant form of micro-dub. The track cuts off suddenly and Part 5 follows a virtually identical path, adding some faint shimmers to its core patterns, fading away at its end. In Part 6 another quiet expanse of soft monotone rumblings and radiant-though-dark curtains is eventually visited upon by sporadic thuds. To be sure, the result is more intriguing than that particular description may sound. Upon another isolated, otherworldly plain, Part 7 (19:27) delivers a shimmery, buzzy blanket of sound, wrinkling in various intensities and phases, sometimes fading away to almost nothingness, sometimes stirring up dank breezes. With artists like Ayers, Everall and Harris involved, it's bound to be good; and it is. The 71.5-minute-long Mesmeric Enabling Device is delightfully dark, pulsing with inscrutable textures and lingering shadows which transform your listening area into a comfortably dimmed zone of introspection. The only thing shining with lightness is the AmbiEntrance's glimmering 9.0 rating amid the lovely gloom. This review posted November 27, 1999 AmbiEntrance © 1999-97 by David J Opdyke (except CD cover art, rights retained by original owners).