Last week I thought I’d write about this song.
It’s one I enjoy listening to but I think I wasn’t able to articulate the listening experience in the words below. That said, I think the below still captures the song in a certain wait. Maybe not in the way I thought I would, but it still gets something about the song across.

Godflesh’s “Pure II” is from Pure.

I hope you enjoy.

—

A high humming, almost as though a slithering, hollow feedback. Something else starts rising to prominence and suddenly stops. Percussive strikes come in, heavy whilst that feedback keeps droning away in a distance. The strikes are almost forcing space and they echo outward.

Other sounds remain distant, piercing, seeming like metal screeching and from friction. The strikes stop and those background sounds come to the forefront, reaching out, all hollow, all disembodied, trying to reach into a state of physicality and yet are unable to. They move as one object, flowing, echoing and heaving. They move slowly but without a sense of precision.

For a moment a harshness comes forward and perhaps these sounds are like tendrils, spreading out and taking on different things whilst remaining themselves. They are spreading through an airless space and they are creating motion in contrasts. Some disappear, some come back, some remain unchanging.

Eventually something akin to percussion comes in as a loop, fading out then coming back. It eventually disappears as the harshness continues traveling. Something underneath it all seems to express an ominousness, but it is ignored. It is smothered by the slithering droning. It seems like fragments but it remains continuous. It eventually seems to spread and in that it no longer holds its body and becomes another element moving in the mass.

More sounds change and something roars among a murk. As it does everything clears for a moment. It remains muffled and so it becomes a rolling wave that cannot erupt. More slithering and smothering of it, growing in harshness, growing in cold abrasiveness, trying to bury it or absorb it, to eliminate its form and reduce it to nothingness, but perhaps this is a mutual relationship. Perhaps this is a joining in a space with no oxygen.

This muffled sound remains, however. It is yet to be absorbed. It is alongside the other sounds but it does not get taken over. It does stop soon, and suddenly there is an emptiness.

What remains tries to fill the space but it is unable to and a buzzing arises from somewhere. The slithering is gone and the buzzing remains. Other sounds come into form and once more seem to be trying to come into a physical form. Once more it is not controlled, or does not feel like it is a controlled attempt. Slithering returns and sounds remain harsh.

From a present distance a percussive strike rumbles out. It is stretched and perhaps it isn’t percussive at all. Perhaps it is just an imitation, or the percussion has lost its original form. It is trying to remain itself but it cannot. It does not force space in the way it once did and so droning remains not at the edges but firmly in the forefront.

Heaving, forcing forward whilst other sounds crawl and suddenly all seems to press inward, but in this there is a calm. There is a moment spreading out without losing its form and it holds a calm. Noise still washes through everything and buzzes, but then it all clears and all that is left is this rumble with a response. Something else hums and wavers in response. An elongated buzz comes in smoothly shaped before growing rough and lowering.

Things seem more harmonious and perhaps menacing and suddenly sounds reach out but are unable to get there. They fall back and something scrapes away. It seems like a voice being smeared but it is difficult to tell.

Another sound comes to the forefront, maybe that wave from earlier but it disappears and there is nothingness. There is cleared space, only with the idea of a percussive strike rumbling through. Something else comes from the nothingness but disappears before it can grow prominent and the rumbling fades away as the song ends.