BSPH: Moby - Thousand

Listening to Moby may be really encouraging. When not sentimental - he's sparkling with great ideas and goes way beyond reason. "Thousand" is one such things. It is a very special track from Moby. Its gimmick is that it is a composition with the fastest tempo in beats-per-minute - aforementioned 1000. In some way it is rather sly adaptation of certain ideas from JG Ballard's "Crash". The whole thing seems to be moving on the highway - trying to break the fabric of reality and break on through to the other side.

"Thousand" is very simple and effective composition. It starts off with a menacing dark ambient procedural two-tone melody. It dark and hot. There is distinct ecstatic howl piecing through the thick heat. Then enters the beat. It is relatively slow but steady and intimidating. Tempo amps up and the whole thing starts to turn around faster and faster and faster and faster before losing any recognizable features and turning into a drab streak blazing through space. The beat of "Thousand" is grinding, crunching, thrashing. chatterton lawnmower shuffle. It is accompanied with sampled ecstatic vocalize. The howl phases in and out. As the beat intensifies - so does the howl. It circles around the beat. Then the whole thing stops. As if the beat went off the cliff full speed. Another howl goes off hanging in the middle of nowhere. The beat comes back limping and battered. It slows down a bit and drags, almost falls apart. Then it gets itself together, hulks up and once again goes faster, faster, faster, faster. Sampled howls are chopped and flanged into a siren-like lash. It is disorienting and can go on forever. Then music smashes against the padded cell wall and sticks to the surface while the sampled howl break off and flies away so far and fast it burn out succumbing to the null of conclusion. 

"Thousand" is one of the earliest examples of glorious genre called Extratone. What it is? This term is used to describe music that is played so fast that the beat blends into one indistinguishable tone thus the title "Extratone". Stylistically it is natural evolution of digital hardcore and grindcore. Empirically is like getting a shot of tornado. Everything whirls and swishes. No matter how hard you try - it is always fun to listen to extratone. You always get the feeling that the events around you are happening so fast you are unable to catch any glimpse and instead just keep getting very abstract nauseating roundabout. 

There is also another way to listen "Thousand" - backwards. That transforms it into a Wagnerian vacuum cleaner massacre in a manner of Lovecraftian Gainax dies irae / wrath of god. It sucks everything in with a swagger of a black hole and leaves tintinabulation of the void tickling far side of the clapper. It is truly terrifying that way.