“Sisters” is our first listen in on Prairie‘s upcoming LP After the Flash Flood, due out April 27th via the German label Denovali. The project is helmed by the Belgian-based multi-instrumentalist Marc Jacobs, and his cinematic soundscapes combine Doom’s punishing minimalism with formidable elements of electronic ambiance. Utilizing guitar, field recordings, drum programing and synthesizer, Prairie’s After the Flash Flood imagines a post-apocalyptic world without humans.
Jacobs’ massive soundscapes seem to mimic large-scale natural events like the slow melting of ice floes and giant glaciers breaking free. “Sisters” employs that frigid quality as it opens with the monumental creaking of a giant ice structure eventually giving way to a flow of freezing water. Soon this sonic vantage seems to ascend upward to take in a larger panorama with water and air joining together in a giant wash of sound. Not long after, though, this ambiance is subjected to channel changing blasts of tone that seem designed to disturb any sense of easy listening, while ice blue waters gnash below. The track’s final minute or so is spent eerily drifting through decaying layers and pulses of white noise, with ghostly echoes almost sounding like the murmur of vanished human voices.
