Some artists merely write music while others sculpt entire sonic worlds. Minorarc, the long-running brainchild of Canberra & Melbourne producer and underground arts visionary Ivan Bullock, does the latter with an unwavering hand. His instrumental album, “Inclusions,” released in September 2023 is more than just a record. It’s a meditation, a reckoning, a quietly devastating journey into despair, regret, and the fractured brilliance of human emotion. Today, I welcome you to the haunting universe of Minorarc, where the piano doesn’t just speak—it bleeds, and the guitars carry weight like memories too painful to forget.
To understand “Inclusions,” you must first understand the artist. Ivan Bullock is not just a musician—he is a pillar of Australia’s underground and experimental music community. A classically trained violinist who cut his modern teeth in Tokyo’s experimental scene, Bullock’s first project, Mystral Tide, graced stages from Japan to Leipzig’s infamous Wave-Gotik-Treffen in 2002. Returning to Australia in 2003, he became an active champion for local artists, launching the Enzyme concert series, which became a decade-long platform for experimental musicians, including features at the Melbourne Fringe Festival. For over two decades now, under the Minorarc banner, Bullock has fused his deep classical roots with raw progressive metal energy and avant-garde electronics. The result is utterly uncompromising.
Now, onto the album, it is not a passive listening experience. It demands your full emotional attention—and rewards it with exquisite emotional detail. Let’s delve into it.
The album opens with a brooding, minimalist piano motif—like rain tracing down a forgotten windowpane. Titled “A Drizzle Vagrant I,” it sets a tone of isolation and introspection. Synths hum like distant traffic, and you’re already swallowed into Bullock’s somber dreamscape.
“Seven Times Burnt” is a slow-burning piece, rising like smoke from ruin. Guitars enter with jagged distortion, pushing the track into metal territory while keeping its spine deeply emotive. This is a song about scars that don’t heal but glow red with memory.
“Meet The Blade” hits hard. Angular rhythms, erratic time signatures, and a shifting sonic landscape that feels like confrontation—with the self, with the past. The classical piano melodies still cut through, but there’s a violence to them now. A necessary violence.
“Three Times” is a solemn, nearly funeral dirge. Deep basslines and echoing atmospheres build tension like a whispered argument in the dark. The track speaks of resignation and reflection, of looping through the same choices—and the same regrets.
Moving on “Bleeding Facet,” the title alone tells you what to expect: sharp edges and emotional hemorrhaging. But within the chaos is a sense of control. Bullock is a master of pacing, letting dissonance unfold like a carefully choreographed collapse.
In “Triclinic,”, the composition fractures—fittingly, as it references one of the most complex crystal systems in geometry. Tension builds in odd polyrhythms, yet the structure is meticulously mathematical. A brilliant nod to both chaos and control.
Now on “A Drizzle’s Vagrant II, ”a return but changed track, the motifs from track one return, now layered and weightier—aged by the tracks that came before. There’s a melancholic beauty here, a sense of fragile resolution or perhaps acceptance.
Closing the album, “Blue Cold Mess” is an icy, sprawling closer. Electronics shimmer like frozen breath, while low-end guitars create an unsettling drone. The track doesn’t resolve so much as dissipate, like fog lifting from a battlefield.
Bullock’s mastery lies not just in performance but in production. Every sound on Inclusions is placed with surgical precision, yet the emotional organic quality never gets lost. He crafts his compositions using piano, guitar, bass, and various synthesizers—sometimes in harmony, often in conflict. The piano leads the emotional charge—intimate, mournful, always raw. Guitars swell and slice, sometimes post-rock in their texture, sometimes full-on progressive metal in their relentless force. The synth work is spacious and immersive, like a sonic fog that both obscures and reveals.
Bullock’s experience as a multi-instrumentalist and a composer for live experimental performance is felt in the deeply cinematic and untraditional song structures. Nothing follows a verse-chorus path—these are movements in a psychological symphony. It’s rare to find an artist who has both cultivated a community and maintained a personal creative identity this long—and this fiercely. With Inclusions, Minorarc reminds us that instrumental music can still be storytelling of the highest order.
This is music for those who have felt the weight of reflection. Music for the hours after midnight. Music that holds your face to the mirror—and dares you to look. Welcome, Ivan Bullock. Your legacy in Australia’s underground is already secure—but with “Inclusions,” you’ve etched a new chapter into your mythology. So, if you’re looking for a sonic experience that’s as intense as it is introspective, “Inclusions” is not to be missed. Let it consume you—and you just might come out the other side changed
Listen to the “Inclusions” album on Spotify
Follow Minorarc here for more information
