Discography
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This album has been a long, long time coming but the wait has most certainly been worth it. Aaron Davis has been firing missile after missile as ACRE for some years now, but nothing else stands out as his defining moment quite like "Sacrifice." This opus was in the pipeline for years, being etched out of silver and rising from pile of ash after pile of ash. It's absolutely monumental, totally epic in scope. Each thick slab of heavy droning sibilance is a testament to Davis' vision and attention to detail. It will suck you in immediately and stick to you like glue. Notably there are no synthesizers or guitars anywhere on "Sacrifice." When you hear the density of sound and variety in the sonic textures blowing out your speakers, that seems utterly impossible. Yet, here we are. As the opening blasts of "Badlands" echo through your skull at 100 mph, the horizon seems lost in a thick, white haze. Everything else stops and shuts down. Subtle shifts in trajectory are barely noticeable at first, but by the end of the journey you've landed on a completely different plane. Surface to air, infinite flight; all achieved just over 14 minutes. It's not all a blown-out, straight-to-the-skull masterpiece. "Live Take" feels positively smooth and silky in comparison. Reverberating tones drenched in pure light bleed nothing but efferevesence and life. Everything feels exactly in the spot it should be, there's no detritus or collateral damage to speak of. Davis runs a tight ship, only letting things bolt for the door and scream over the edge when its absolutely necessary. In the end, the biggest thing about "Sacrifice" is just how massive it feels. From the beginning, its string of endless symphonic hypnosis. There are lingering connections to David Tudor and Norman McLaren fighting their way to the surface throughout. ACRE's compositions are as precise as ever here, each note and each path carefully chosen and dropped into place. No synths. No guitars. No laptops. No looping. Yeah. It's time to start dropping bombs. |