DECIMETRIC - Turning Your Blood to Mercury

Australia seems to lack a hard Industrial music scene, if there is such an underground; it is surely situated in bedrooms; in front of computer screens, synthesizers and home made instruments. The aforementioned should underline why I was greatly surprised to come across Decimetric, hailing from Adelaide - producing raw, hard hitting industrial music that blew me away, and is sadly missing from the Australian alternative scene.

I decided to contact Kyle Tunnicliff – the man behind Decimetric’s industrial frameworks and power tools – and found a captivating entity with a conceptual state of mind and outlook upon our world.

Seven years ago, the origins of Decimetric developed their roots, as Kyle – then 16 – observed a friend using a version of FL studio. “I'd always wanted to 'try my hand' at putting a few songs together but never thought about what devices I would use to do it. I asked him for the demo of the program and immediately became infatuated with it. I was soon attempting full length songs which were mostly one good loop with noise around it, and over the years I've started trying new tools, programs and filters, shaping each song into its own unique form.”

Unleashing his debut “Factorum” upon the world-wide-web, Tunnicliff has presented an album which not only bestows brilliant, synthetic industrial schemes, but presents its audience with musical representations of narrative: an historical account. “Ultimately the album [Factorum] is a story about how technology plays an instrumental role in the sad and unavoidable loss of an entire universe… “Factorum” is the concept of loss.”

“The album is about an entirely fictional place and time. I have not tried to reflect anything deliberately about society, only theoretical situations under which the subjects of the stories react a certain way.”

Covering a multitude of personal – yet fictional – events, “Factorum” spans from “the life of the ancient creature, monolithic compared to lesser species around it; the development and activation of the machine which begins the universal collapse” toward the “eternal factory, an enigma which does not exist in normal space-time, a factory that continues to produce forever after” and the ultimate demise, “the final exponential decimation of the universe, the worlds dissolved, all matter and non-matter banished, and the moment of pure emptiness before all space is devoured into void.”

“Factorum” presents a tale of a functioning universe and its termination – “The beginning of the album is a cross-section of a point where everything is functioning… Following are the songs that tell of the event that causes the universe to begin collapsing, and the effects on worlds away from the epicenter. The conclusion, naturally, explains the final moments of a history.”

Kyle’s past influences explain his intention and desire that his music come across as a construct of formation, that his music is “built, rather than written.”

“I liked techno. I didn't love it, but I hated everything else so passionately, techno made sense. Techno was aural Lego for me; I understood the way it was constructed. After a while I started to like bands like the Prodigy, Offspring and Rammstein… and that made me hungry for a more powerful style of music.”

Kyle is not greatly influenced by the written word, however stating that, “Society in general inspires me as far as concept goes.”

“To me the world and its people are mostly machines. The body is a mobility machine for a mind which is programmed to react as it is matured. People are somewhat forced to accept consciousness as justification of individuality.”

“Factorum” is an instrumental album, thus bringing forth the inevitable question of Kyle’s opinion upon the fact that some – after listening to the album – will walk away oblivious toward the messages presented in Decimetric’s music.

“I think that very few artists have music without meaning, modern radio has punched a terrible hole in the general understanding of meaning in music. The fact that most people expect words in a song to help convey it's purpose is a bit of a joke to me. It's absurd to think that the music of the greatest known composers who had nothing but instruments to work with; went about their writing with nothing at heart. Most of the songs that are popular these days and the bands that write them have less meaning than the back of a cereal box. Words are not everything when a story is told. My meanings are told through sounds and instruments because I wanted to build a song, not a poem. I can't expect other people to feel precisely what I do when they hear my music, but I would be greatly relieved if they feel something like it. Each song has its own story and theme, and if listeners believe that the explanations I give match what the sounds make them see, I couldn't ask for more. To be specific, there are no lyrics as such in the music, but the actions and events imagined are the story depicted in lieu of lyrics.”

Kyle further clarified that complete explanations of each song and its view point will be included with the final release of the album – “the story of each song would be best read while listening to its audio counterpart.”

Dabbling in Black Metal, such as; Dark Throne, Burzum, Mayhem, as well as hard tech/trance/industrial, Kyle’s opinion upon the lack of an Australian Industrial scene is due to lack of population – “particularly in Adelaide.”

“Most other countries have a far greater population density and number crunching would reveal that we don't have too many people to catalyze a quickly grown Industrial scene. It's getting there, but I think it will happen in waves. Metal in Adelaide has experienced a similar push uphill. Although there is not a great base for my kind of music in Australia, at least there is opportunity to create it freely.”

To underline Kyle’s intriguing mentality, he explained his ultimate want with regards to the reactions of an audience listening to his music.

“I want my music, no matter what message I have to convey to be delivered as if it were coming from a metallic source, or machine. I like to use sounds of industrial environments to try and evoke imagery of cold metal frameworks and chemical reactions, scaffolding and power tools.”

“I want the listener when they hear the music, to feel metals filtering through their being, mercury leeching through like blood, steel replacing bone mass and cabling and pulleys where muscles and joints reside. Electricity arcing between generators and motors, a ball of plasma at the core.”

Hoping to play live within the next few months, those of us no situated in Adelaide will have to be content with listening to Decimetric’s recordings at www.numberonemusic.com/decimetric for now.