The second CD of the threesome The Missing Ensemble is playing for a couple of hours now (set to repeat) and they completely amaze (again). ‘Zeropolis’ is already the 8th release on Low Impedance Records and – shame on me – I had never heard of them. To put it stronger, the only names from their releases I actually know are Scott Arford and Francisco Lopez, who did a collaboration for the label back in 2005.

But let’s focus on The Missing Ensemble, the collaboration between Daniel De Los Santos (known from Tamarin and Mad Monkey Records), John Sellekaers and Mathias Delplanque. Their first release on Mondes Elliptiques received a 9.3 out of 10 on Gothtronic, which some would consider still on the low side.

In comparison with the first CD ‘Zeropolis’ is much more droney and “stretched” ... Hmmm … Okay, let’s say this properly, it’s less musique concrete and much more atmospheric ambient drones with thin layers of subtle noise. It’s hard to compare it with something, but in case you really want, think of a symbiosys between Daniel Menche, Yen Pox and Thomas Koner.

The only track a little out of the musical context might be ‘Attaining Pt. 1’ and even if I can’t exactly pinpoint the “why” it still is a track that very well fits the release.

You’ve taken a guided tour through a city where the architecture amazes you and where the people are different from everyone you’ve ever met in the past.

In the end you are left with a feeling of confusion, and you want to re-enter the city to see if what you felt at first was indeed as unsettling to the mind as you think you thought it was.

The Missing Ensemble is a Canadian project by Daniel De Los Santos, John Sellekaers and Mathias Delplanque. “Zeropolis” is my first contact with their music, which is an interesting amalgam of various influences and sources (mostly treated field recordings and regular instruments, in a few instances played by guest musicians, but you might have a hard time recognizing their timbres). The initial “Old York” is a very impressive, almost theatrical piece in which echoes from the outside world and huge subterranean thumps mix in a growing tension that literally breaks the dam of noise at one point, recalling some of Francisco Lopez’s most enthralling crescendos. “A long walk” starts with a gorgeous ominous drone, not distant from certain Hafler Trio pages but with an additional touch of mystery, blemished by distant squealing sounds that are probably produced by Lenny Gonzales’ guitar, but I wouldn’t bet my house on it; very effective and powerful, especially when the ground under your feet begins to tremble thanks to roaring pulses from the centre of the earth. “Attaining Pt.1” is an example of “dirty minimal movement”, featuring Ernst Karel’s processed trumpet sounding like a dozen squirrels singing a mantra while stuffed into in a pitch-shifting toaster; it could be an appealing moment for fans of early Koji Asano. Instead, “Attaining Pt.2” ends the disc on a menacing note, the same squirrels petrified in terror by wavering noirish distortions in the low-frequency region. Let me stress that, despite the above mentioned famous names, this is not your average photocopy of something already established: the Missing Ensemble try and subvert a few rules on their own terms, suceeding for the large part of this well conceived release.

The sounds in Zeropolis are organic enough to make one believe they are field recordings of the subtle mechanical machinations of a hyper-bleak, postmodern metropolis—a Gotham City of sorts; a place where dark and deranged echoes vibrate through alleyways and the subliminal, rejected residue and decay of capitalism is heard. If the abject is the underpinnings of the subject, then Zeropolis speaks the same of the conurbation. While the concept is interesting, the resonant buzzing and blanketed, electronic ricochets are frankly too eerie and depressing, not unlike the dreadful winter maze scene in the Shining.

As the title suggests, Zeropolis paints a dystopic portrait of ruined metropolises where all traces of humanity have been wiped out by some cataclysmic event. The bleak mood is sustained remarkably throughout the evocative, fifteen-minute opener “Old York” where muffled beats rumble intermittently amidst simmering washes of crackle and billowing clouds of industrial noise, and phantom tones bleed from electrical wires. Here and elsewhere, The Missing Ensemble (Daniel De Los Santos, John Sellekaers, and Mathias Delplanque) sculpts oceanic drones that purposefully suspend time and court disorientation and hallucinations.

Though the longer tracks, “Old York” and “Attaining Pt. 1,” enable the group’s aesthetic to be explored most fully, shorter pieces present complete worlds too. “A Long Walk,” for example, guides the listener through a decimated landscape where flickers of noise still resonate, despite the absence of humanity. Interestingly, the group is joined on a number of pieces by trumpeter Ernst Karel and guitarists Lenny Gonzales and Quentin de Hemptinne, even though their instruments undergo radical alteration when embedded within the Ensemble’s drones. Having said that, the stuttering bleat of Karel’s horn is still recognizable when accompanied by skin-crawling noises in “Attaining Pt. 1,” and de Hemptinne’s guitar flickers slip and slide provocatively over an intensifying cloud of haze in “Zero-sum.” One of the most appealing things about Zeropolis is its restraint; much of the material unfolds glacially and is pitched at a subdued level that enhances the aura of desolation.

Experimental music and rock n roll are really not that different: Just when you thought that you had heard it all before, an album comes and blows you away. To many, the Missing Ensemble’s first disc, “Hidden Doors” was such an album: Three open-minded musicians from all corners of the musical spectrum and a shared love for drones, three illustrious guests among whom noise fetishist Masami Akita aka Merzbow and four lucidly realised musical ideas made for a cocktail that had many reviewers panting for breath. Hot on the heels of that debut comes “Zeropolis” – and seems to make true on all the promises given on the previous effort.

Now there will be many claiming that this can hardly be a surprise and that the mix of composers making up this project basically implied a sort of underground supergroup: On the other hand, the different personas of its members could just as well have torn it apart: Mathias Delplanque’s solo oeuvre already swings between the bass-heavy wonders of dub and reduced sound art, so adding drone-desciple Daniel de los Santos and John Sellekaers, who brings experience in soundtracks to the group opens the doors wide to arbitary cross-over concepts. That is not how things have turned out, however. This is a focussed and inwardly closed affair, it takes the listener through various scenes and moods without changing its vocabulary. Apparently, there is a common ground for all members and interestingly, it lies outside of the spaces occupied by their individual releases. “Zeropolis” is 100% abstract and does its job completely without melodies, harmonic progressions, rhythms, hooks or linear structures. The sixteen minutes of opening track “Old York” encapsulate everything the trio is currently about: A direct and confronting sound and a recognisable style between subtle field recordings, microscopic clicks, dark ambient backdrops and piercing pads inside a piece that appears to be fading away at halftime, only to come back with a haunting second part. “Attaining Pt. 1” meanwhile leans on sterterous horn blowings in the overtone region, its tectonics shofting slowly and hardly noticeable, while “La suspension ethereenne” is a cool light-bulb in a completely dark room. The arrangements are open and transparent, yet the overall tone is one of estrangement and foreignness – and you’re drawn into it just like the characters of a horror movie always follow the most dangerous leads.

The craftmanship on display here has certainly played an important part in the album’s impact. Delplanque, de los Santos and Sellekaers know the strenghts of their sounds in and out and intuitively keep the knob fiddling to an absolute minimum, which makes “Zeropolis” a solemn and stern affair. At the same time, the delicate allusions to other genres lend it a spaceousness and a feel of “anything could happen”. What it certainly demonstrates once again is that experimental music, just like rock n roll, should never exclusively rely on the intelligence of machines but will always profit from the interaction between different individuals.

Behind The Missing Ensemble we find John Sellekaers of Xingu Hill and Dead Hollywood Stars (and responsible for mastering music from many others), Daniel De Los Santos of Tamarin) and our recent discovery Mathias Delplanque. No beats here, but it hoovers around in a similar territory as the Tokyo Mask release. Dark, unsettling atmospheres of desolated cities at night. An empty city, with some flickering lights. A chilling event, driving in this city. Music of a highly sound track like nature, but is it a film that you want to watch on your sofa, sipping wine? Or does it depict a world that we rather not want to see? I assume it’s the latter. But The Missing Ensemble is something we want to hear. Ambient industrial at it’s most scary. Perhaps not the most original kind of music, but it’s done with great care.

All of us, everybody, we are living in zeropolis. Any kind of vision of bettering and enlightening the lives of people or building the perfect state in a city built by the most honest and equal standards and principles has been shattered by the individual’s wills, motivations, fears and hopes. Big plans like Brazilia or Petersburg have turned into vast slums filled with debris, pain and murder. Small scale visions like planned suburban settlements, urban city projects and even rebellious retreats such as Waco, have either burned down, hurt by revolts or are slowly drowing in waves of hatred and crime working itself up from petty to grand. The suburbs of Paris burning were a big sign that this is not just a restricted phenomenen, not a phenomenen belonging to the third world and the mega-agglomarations of human lives without the support and sustainability needed, but also one of what calls itself the spearhead of western civilisation. From the riots in LA to the Nazi-parades in Warsaw, the western world just acts so shocked because the media puts its spotlights on eruptions of problems but rarely ever on the problems itself, so we were sitting in our easy chairs, watching sitcoms and worrying none at all. Dystopia all around, but washing powder commercials on the coloured screen.

Underneath, at the sides and over our heads electric current is running, the refridgerator is humming, the tv has its own static background noise and heating, plumbing and air condition also add their own special frequency of hissing and humming to what makes up our noise-infested lives. Our minds are dumbing down and shutting out these constant noises, just the same way we are shutting out inequality, crime and poverty in our social lives. Happy with secondary experiences gathered from movies, big parts of our brains are withering away by remaining unused, while other parts are turning crazy from the noises stored there, locked safely away from our conscious minds. Somewhere in the distance somebody is moving some furniture producing a slight cracking and screeching sound. Out on the street somebody is kicking or crashing some cans or wood and the echoe is slowly dragging itself into our living rooms. In the hallway someone drops his keys and the clattering sound echoes through the walls. All the while we are leaning back and ignoring anything that might try to come to us.

The Missing Ensemble sounds as if they are taking these noises and sounds, that were dragged to the background or locked away in the subconscious by our minds, and then expanding and empowering them, bringing them back into the light of our conscious minds, making us have to deal with them on an open basis. They confront us with what is around us and inside us, making us aware of the world we live in, of the places, structures and workings so close to us that we are ignoring. And probably also of their adverse effects on us, our minds and bodies.

Musically the tracks on “zeropolis” accordingly are a very subtle and equally subconcious matter, sometimes offensive and sometimes soothing, but mostly brutally honest and direct noise drones filled with hissing, static, pressure and dense noise. I constantly have to think of Wolf Eyes, as the only musical group at the moment going to the same extremes musically within the same range of issues, but the Missing Ensemble’s drones are a lot more static and fundamental, than Wolf Eyes chaotic wailing and thundering. Where the one group likes to dwell in the most grotesque and offensive pictures, the other one seems to favor a more academic approach and hones its effectivenes by roughening up the basic material while polishing off the rough edges. Finally, that makes for a much more massive musical material, which enables the Missing Ensemble to work with silence and low dynamics, whereas Wolf Eyes always has to go full force. Slowly building, evolving, moving and washing away, all kinds of noises appear within the aural range, sometimes at its lowest bottom, sometimes testing the endurance of the listener. Of course, that is straining and exhausting stuff, but also enriching and reliefing. It seems as if that should tell us that 2000 years of musical theory about harmonies and songstructures is just another part of what numbs our minds.

Though, of course, the issues mentioned above, can be set into words and therefore also can be put in song (as well as in painting, choreography and any other kind of art) the statement does not describe any sort of ranking of artforms, because after all some popular song about how mankind has to save the earth might be a lot more effective than this record. I just wanted to point out that the basic way of coming to the result on “zeropolis” and the Missing Ensemble’s drones (almost) leaves out the artistic medium by taking the real life symptom as the basic artistic instrument. Thinking about how other artforms could take the same route of leaving out inter-mediate steps (for instance literature taking newspaper-bits or copytexts of advertisement, choreography taking the way people move around and to each other in a city) I also started to wonder if it would be possible to combine all major artforms in this strategy to the end of a Lebenskunstwerk which would in all consequence mean to lead a direct, open and honest live on a meta-level of modern society. If somebody managed to do that and it would get known in public, I guess, the artist would be lynched.

Zeropolis’ is made up of dark and sinister soundscapes, drones and production that make a lasting impression on the most hardened listener. The Missing Ensemble’s sonic constructions demand your attention and probably something of the physical apparatus reproducing these sonic constructions as well. An ambitious release excitingly packaged it is clear from the beginning that it was made for the listening crowd rather than the moving one. The quality of production and techniques is unmistakable. This release is wonderfully uncompromising and surely a big achievement by the highly interesting Low Impedance Recordings. If you’re not afraid of the drones investigate The Missing Ensembles epic Zeropolis right away! And as far as LOZ goes, you can’t help but wondering what’s next?

In the experimental electronica field soundtracks for imaginary films are not that unusual. Soundtracks for imaginary /cities/, however, are somewhat rarer. Ulver’s magnificent “Perdition City” is one of the few examples I can think of but The Missing Ensemble (a trio comprised of Daniel De Los Santos, John Sellekaers and Mathias Delplanque) have now added “Zeropolis”, their second release, to the list.

Whereas “Perdition City” appears to be a vibrant place, a modern-day Faerie, “Zeropolis” is an empty graveyard of a city. Opening track “Old York” sounds like the whirring, incessant machinery of an underground car-park; grinding gears and hissing hydraulics. The promotional material cites George Romero as a “silent architect” and this certainly sounds like the introduction to a zombie film; doors flap ominously and streets are strewn with the hastily abandoned detritus of modern life as the camera pans past silently.

From the silent streets, “La Suspension Éthéréenne” takes us into an office building where fluorescent lights crackle insanely and photocopiers spark into erratic life. “A Long Walk” continues this with jerking, air-conditioner drones and the plink, plink of dripping water. A sinister air is introduced with this duo of tracks as crescendo-ed throbs are cut off like slamming doors and a low, sub-tone of vocalization creeps into the mix.

“Attaining Pt. 1” adds a level of discordance that seems incongruent after the initial, blended tracks but it does invoke a sense of dying radio transmissions that leads into the misfiring electronics and warping bass-lines of “Zero-Sum” then the long, slow decay of “Attaining Pt. 2”.

If “Zeropolis” had continued down the same stark streets of its opening two tracks then this would have been an excellent record. As it stands, the move from layered sounds which evoke a disturbingly cold, yet weirdly familiar, environment to a more synthetic use of electronics means that the entirety loses power. It comes back in the end strains of “Attaining Pt. 2” where wind whistles hollowly through plastic piping but its brother-track is overly lengthy and leaves the middle of the album lacking which is a shame as the initial build-up of over-arching threat is immense.

A more layered and increasingly sinister approach to the rest of the album would’ve made this a superb addition to the “urban soundtrack” genre but, as it stands, “Perdition City” remains the capital.

This is the second release by this multi-national, digitally-linked ensemble of sound manipulators, each of whom has numerous other projects going on to greater or lesser acclaim – John Sellekaers is a member of Dead Hollywood Stars, Daniel De Los Santos also appears with Tamarin and Mathias Delplanque is a respected solo soundscaper who also incongrously releases crucial dub plates as Lena.

I find Zeropolis to be more lopsided than its first album, “Hidden Doors” – more angular, more non-narrative (as distinct from “less narrative”, mind you), more defiantly unclassifiable. The trio seem intent upon defying convention, whatever shape it might take. Even the penultimate track “Zero-Sum” (perhaps the title is an ironic caution), seeming to be heading for some kind of textbook crescendo/release, breaks off suddenly and dissatisfyingly. Most likely according to The Missing Ensemble´s evil design to confound any and all expectations.

It is hard to love, but easy to admire. It is very committed anti-music, an odd alchemical experiment, not necessarily always successful but a bold one, combining drone, looped and glitched electronics, isolationist ambience, and a kind of atonal post-rock. It is quite dark music, downright chilling at times. But whereas “Hidden Doors” was often spacious (if unlit), Zeropolis is cramped, close, and confining.

As on their debut, guest musicians are utilized, here two guitarists and returnee Ernst Karel, whose trumpet is put through some particularly excruciating strangulations. Though it does escape torture long enough to add some very distinctive beauty to the closing coda, “Attaining Pt. 2”.

This release from 2007 offers 45 minutes of atonal noise.

The Missing Ensemble is: Daniel De Los Santos (from Tamarin), John Sellekaers (from Xingu Hill, and Dead Hollywood Stars), and Mathias Delplanque (from Lena, and Bidlo). They are joined by: Lenny Gonzales and Quentin de Hemptinne on guitar, and Ernst Karel on trumpet.

Urban decay is keynote in this music. The first track exemplifies this with a hiss that takes fourteen minutes to build to an empty drone punctuated by remote impacts, recede, then resurge. The next piece repeats this structure, using feedback tones mixed with wavering eruptions of space noise.

The third track combines the elements of the previous soundscapes, injecting a touch of adversity as the electronic drones struggle for supremacy.

The next track introduces tortured trumpet to the minimal mix, allowing the horn’s spliced-and-diced wail to batter itself senseless in its attempts to flourish. The electronic tonalities win out in the end.

Ilbient glitches appear in the fifth track along with backwards guitar notes, the latter proving a worthy opponent for the overall dominance of drones.

With the final piece, things return to their sparse grind. Electronics grate softly, suppressing trumpet cameos and guitar mutilations. As expected, the drones are victorious.

Mainly for those who seek escape from cohesive harmonies

Silent architectures, barren urban landscapes, empty and corrupted spaces, a general dystopic vision of the future of our cities seems to pervade the inspired ‘Zeropolis’ project, made by The Missing Ensemble (Daniel De Los Santos, John Sellekaers and Mathias Delplanque). Skilled in manipulating drones and frequencies, the members of this combo underline in an abstract way the complex nature of transformations, with decaying sound structures and images, in the subliminal perception of hostile environments, then put into sounds, often gloomy and oppressive. Rot and decay reminiscent of ghostly visions, of a sense of majestic impotence, relegating us to the role of passive watchers of an already written story.