- Auxiliary's Symbol has been touted by label founder ASC as an outlet for the most experimental reaches of bass music, where tempo is finally rendered a meaningless number. The series has mostly been home to fairly unchallenging (if not ineffably beautiful and well-executed) ambient-led drum & bass landscapes. Entry 4 comes from London/Australia Autonomic stalwart Consequence, and it lives up to the series' self-imposed mission.
While previous entries bathed in a kind of free-floating, wondrous beauty, Consequence's world is tinted much darker. "Symbol 4.1" crawls along its ten-minute runtime with microscopic percussion that skitters and scatters, dwarfed by the massive atmospheres around them, a trick repeated in the similarly lengthy "Symbol 4.3." That latter track reveals some possibly latent noise tendencies in McLaren, as drones, found sound and eerie speech samples finally give way to the same neurotic tapping, only this time it's buried in scuzz, dredging up thick layers of low frequency oscillation. The other two tracks are eerie interludes toying with static, prime fodder for sound design fetishists. Unforgiving, autistically fussy and focused, Consequence's Symbol satisfies the series' ambitious criteria, but it's not exactly easy listening either.
Tracklist A1 Symbol #4.1
A2 Symbol #4.2
AA1 Symbol #4.3
AA2 Symbol #4.4