Linda Aubry Bullock - Ray Of Dark (Sedimental, 2010)

Linda Aubry Bullock (with MTB) - Line's Dead


The name Bullock gets tossed around here a lot. Michael T is a pretty cool dude, quite prolific. But his multi-talented wife, Linda Aubry Bullock, is an equally wondrous music maker and she's got a brand new disc on Sedimental of outstanding solo and collaborative works.

Ray Of Dark is 6 tracks totaling almost 50 minutes with 2 solo pieces, 2 with her husband (together as Rise Set Twilight), 1 with Eric Hardiman (of Rambutan/Tape Drift), and 1 with Ray Hare (of Fossils From The Sun). All 4 occasionally get together to play as Twilight Of The Century, and the first 4 tracks on Ray Of Dark are a direct reaction from one of their performances in Albany of '08. But even though this album is peppered with guests, their sound is never strong enough to dilute what is still thoroughly a Linda Aubry Bullock record.

The opener is the title track, one of the solo pieces, a perfect intro to Bullock's gritty post industrial mind. Tons of echoing & reverb, like a more chilling/less cheesy Jason Voorhees theme. People mumbling, chanting, yelling, and singing, the sounds of walking through an Arabian midnight market with electronic squawks, distant air raid sirens, creaking aluminum floorboards, & rusty buzz saws. I don't want to say that Bullock shows all her cards right in the beginning, but "Ray Of Dark" is crazy good and easily one of the best on the album. If you can get through that 11 minutes of awkward anxiety, you're a fucking champ and you'll make it to the end. Promise.

The rest of Ray is just a clusterfuck of cautious ambient doom. In every nook & cranny there's hidden terror & vertigo, each moment is paused in hesitation, waiting to raise your hackles, paranoid & filled with unnerving nausea. Of course, you're all alone while listening to this. In the dark of night, waiting for somebody to come home, clutch your cup of coffee and pull your knees closer to your chest. Crank it up, beware of "The Story Of Mike" and let the grinding engines permeate your walls & your bones.

Update: Apparently there was a little bit of confusion about the origin of some of the songs when I read the statement on Sedimental's site. Here's the factual shit straight from Mr. Bullock:

"...tracks 2, 3, and 4 were not composed by Linda, but they are all (like the title track) based on a live recording of Twilight of the Century, and they were all commissioned by Linda for this collection. So in addition to composing some of the music on the CD herself, she curated the rest of the album."

Also re: the title track: "Apparently the guy singing in the background is singing some famous French pop tune from the 70s" LOOOLL