Supervøid's Striking Odyssey Into "The Giant Nothing" (Early Album Stream)
Like the cosmic oddity they take their name from, Supervøid deals in immensity and emptiness at the same time: a near-paradox that their debut album The Giant Nothing reflects in both title and content. The experimental doom-ambient group perfectly captures the blankness of space by iteratively exploring pulsating low-frequency mantras, wrapping them in tiers of ethereal sound. As these layers swirl and condense, they begin to outline an impossibly large vacuum: one that’s indescribably massive and yet devoid of all matter. The Giant Nothing is an immense album, and much of that scale comes from how it hints at something even greater and unknowable out there. Venture into the void now with our full album premiere below:
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Hypnotic doom rumbles throughout much of the album, though it shares equal presence with a more ambient side that indulges in country-tinged drone and windswept soundscapes. There’s an unusual science-fiction edge to all of it, imparted through the group’s somewhat unusual choice of instrumentation: cellist Jo Quail joins as a guest contributor here, baritone guitar handles low-end duties, and the shahi baaja (a type of Indian zither) also features in compositions. Quail, who’s also performed on My Dying Bride and Godthrymm albums, adds an immense range of string textures to The Giant Nothing. Haunting lead lines float through “Dark Flow” and “A Cold Spot,” but the strings provide menacing pressure elsewhere, such as on the bombastic “Rip in the Fabric of Space,” weighing down on the threatening riffs like an ominous glare. As a whole, the album feels firmly anchored in space, markedly unattached to earthbound sounds.
For as much distance as The Giant Nothing covers, it’s impressively packed into a vinyl-ready runtime, fitting its expansive theme-building into under 45 minutes. It speaks to the compositional care that’s been put into these songs, never seeming to under-use or explore a motif but avoiding needless repetition at the same time. There’s a ton of detail to be discovered here, offering heavy replayability within its nooks and crannies: beware of gazing into the abyss for too long, of course, but a few more spins can’t hurt.
Supervøid comments:
Imagine being launched in deep space. No idea where you’ll end up and if you ever arrive somewhere. This is what we felt when we recorded The Giant Nothing. We met, we jammed, we created instantly. No direction, no rules. Just emotions.
Jo Quail comments:
This is a record unlike any other I’ve worked on. In my role as ‘lead line’ I was able to explore cello in a way that stands outside of a standard collaborative work. Together we were able to explore texture and musical shape in such depth, and working with these master musicians is a privilege. I would love to bring this to a concert stage if we can!
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The Giant Nothing releases May 7th, 2021 via Subsound Records.
