On "Our Brief Eternity," a 13-minute epic from Heejin Jang's forthcoming album Me and the Glassbirds — out March 3 on Doom Trip Records — the Korean experimentalist delivers a barrage of noises that are at constant risk of exploding. She doesn't care for an all-out assault on the senses, though, instead opting to capture an apocalyptic trek through fog and rubble. There are familiar sounds — electronics revving like engines, uninterrupted beeping and birdsong — and they settle into a rhythmic loop, the song resembling an industrial dance track heard from afar. When a clattering breakbeat arrives, the sample gets stretched like putty, sounding like wooden furniture being ripped apart by a tornado. The overarching feeling is of uneasy displacement; without a groove to latch onto, or invigorating catharsis, "Our Brief Eternity" becomes a portrait of life at its bleakest, for when we trudge through each day burnt out and broken. Amid the haze is a genial conversation dotted with laughter, but any such solace is fleeting here. Jang depicts hell on earth as dreary and hopeless: an empty void.
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