Words by Sean Victory
Sean Victory is a lifelong artist, tinkerer, and musician. His current projects are Nightmare Frontier and World Hum, having also contributed to the groups Famished Ghosts, Future Toys, and Owl & Swan.
Endlessness by Nala Sinephro (Warp Records)
I’ve written a lot about albums like this one recently. There’s something brewing in the convergence of electronics and jazz, and I am here for it. Nala Sinephro’s Endlessness is another fine example of an approaching singularity. The ubiquity of the synthesizer is something I’m very happy to witness, as music of all forms finds use for these ever-evolving devices. Even heavy metal bands make ambient synth records now (Blood Incantation)!
This record is full of delicate forms. Much like Andre3000’s New Blue Sun from last year, we see the broad influences that a musical artist can posses, and how jazz of this shape can find fresh approaches in familiar spaces. A solid jazz backbone— reinforced by electronic arpeggios and chords, takes the predominant shape of the music, but it blends seamlessly into near ambient repetition and mood-weaving synth tones. The synths aren’t anything too fancy either. These are square waves with some Pulse-width modulation, and little ditties that drift in an out of phase with the acoustic instruments, creating a push and pull between the two different structures and highlighting the differences in the voicings. What might feel like a traditional jazz arrangement somehow finds itself in blissed out keyboard runs, and shimmering drum fills and cymbal sprinkles.
The songs are each labeled “Continuum” numbered one through ten, and this name does betray the cohesive nature of the album. All the elements are held in place by a carefully chosen palette of sounds. Nothing audiably out of place here, and it all sits up relatively high in the mix—there’s nothing buried in reverb or tucked into the background. The entire album is collected together by this palette. That is, until the last minute or so of the final Continuum, when a piano slowly fades into the mix (never heard before), and slows like someone is leaning on the reels. This is a genius little trick and sign-off, the broad range and harsh attack of even this gently played piano outro is a sonic signal that the train is leaving the station, announcing itself by inviting in this alien tone, perhaps hinting at what we can next expect from this brilliant composer.
Dew Point Harmonics by Luke Sanger (Balmat Records)
We crawled out of the ocean thirty five billion years ago, and maybe that is why the sound of moving water brings such a sense of peace to us. Called back home to the womb of the world, by the gentle crashing of waves. We start this album with 6AM Beach Walk and the birdsong and chimes of Sanger’s synth studio. Nothing new here, ever since we liberated these sounds from rare earth materials, we’ve been trying to put the sound back in the earth. It’s a common approach from many synthesists, and after this melding experiment of electronics meet beach, the stage is set for the rest of the record. We have synths that melt back into the natural world, blowing over the listener like an autumn breeze.
I first came to know Luke Sanger from his excellent Shared System Research Project, where he operates within the limitations of a single synthesizer, namely the Make Noise Shared System. I’m always drawn to artists that set such limitations, like Charles Cohen spending his entire career behind the Buchla Music Easel. Either way, Sanger has expanded his range of tools on this release, but still manages to produce beautiful, minimal and organic pieces. There are loads of field recordings, attenuated and processed with synths that mimic movement in the natural world. Filters pop and ping, spaces flutter and change size, there’s little bursts of static and FM (frequency modulation) that make the music feel like a hologram that’s struggling to hold state. Some of the more delicate aspects remind me of Japanese ambient music, or something by Visible Cloaks. It’s a beautiful record of unconventional songs, and that points back to the instrument it was written on. This is the magic of modular synths, the shape shifting nature of the instrument itself. The smallest tweak sends ripples through the whole system, and each new patch is a new world to explore.
Cascade by Floating Points (Ninja Tune)
Sam Shepherd’s Floating Points project continues to be a high-water mark for innovation and diversity. No two of his albums sound alike, and his myriad approaches to creation keep fans satisfied. Whether he’s drawing inspiration from a landscape—like on the Pink Floyd-esque Reflections: Mojave Desert, or building peaceful compositions through subtly shifting repetitions—working with jazz legend Pharoah Sanders (RIP) and The London Symphony Orchestra on Promises, his talent and vision shine through.
Cascade is maybe most sonically similar to 2019’s Crush, another record full of rhythmically driven electronics, but Cascade keeps the energy up the whole way through. This is Sam Shepherd in full club mode. He’s headlining two nights at Chicago’s Salt Shed here at the end of the month, and that’s a pretty good indication of the palatability and wide appeal this record holds at its heart. I would nod my head at such an event, all the while fending off the writhing masses of the ecstatic and the coked. The record doesn’t reinvent the wheel or anything. It doesn’t need to. It’s mostly four on the floor, and there’s nothing too outlandish about any of the song’s structures. The album is enjoyable because it does all these familiar things perfectly, and with a palette of perfectly engineered sounds.
Wild God by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (PIAS Records)
Alright. Let’s talk about Nick’s grief. We’ve been transported to some miraculous worlds as we follow his journey of loss, but the fact that he was able to create anything at all is incredible given all that he has endured in the last eight years. It’s all well documented, and for anyone who needs the pain for context, go ahead with your googles. For what it’s worth, the last eight years of his work has been more compelling to me than his extensive back catalog. For my money, there hasn’t been an album more haunting, devastating and cosmically beautiful than 2019’s Ghosteen.
So here we are on the other side of these horrors. There’s a jubilant, radiant energy on these songs. Not living beyond grief, but folding grief into our understanding of what it means to love and what is at stake when we identify with beauty. There’s something else about his confidence and bravado in the delivery of this content. He’s been blasted into space and he’s come back around the planet with something novel to deliver to those of us who can only dream of such a journey. The music is much more rooted in our reality than, say Ghosteen or Skeleton Tree, the instruments sound like themselves, their voicings are familiar and though relatively spare, the production inflates them two to three times their original size. It’s very nearly religious music in how it arrives to us, the tone and the storytelling pointing to a larger capital-T truth.
I think back to a younger self that loved Tom Waits to a near-unhealthy degree, and I remember why I felt so connected to songs of sadness, failure, and shit falling apart. No, it’s not the underlying major depressive disorder—at least not entirely—it’s knowing that there is a universality in loss. The world has plenty of love songs, and they probably pale in number to the truth most of us know: love is not always enough, we make plans and life falls through our fingers the harder we try to hold on. That’s what is at the core of this music and I think that’s why these sad old men can sell out massive concert halls any time they set out on tour. Weirdness of the music be damned, we know the lyrics in our hearts before any words were ever sung.
Honorable Mentions
Ritual by Jon Hopkins (Domino Recording Co.)
I tried this during one of my ketamine treatments with the expectation of similar results to Music for Psychedelic Therapy. It falls a fair bit short of that high-water mark. The music is richly layered, high fidelity, and stereophonically deep. However, even my altered state couldn’t impart the sense of direction and linear narrative my trip was hoping for. Music for Psychedelic Therapy is perhaps too good to follow up with what inevitably feels like a half-hatched sequel. The pieces are there, but the results are far less emotionally resonant, and of course there’s no Ram Dass to council us and give comfort in the afterglow this time.
Lusatian Gothic by Ørdop Wolkenscheidt (self-released)
This is a charming EP by the self-proclaimed musical world-builder and master of narrative songwriting. For those who don’t know, each of Wolkenscheidt’s records are very tightly focused around specific ideas, sounds, and structures. I’m always in awe of his ability to create such cohesive albums especially given that his music is completely instrumental. This is an excellent entry point for new listeners as his usual sonic wizardry is on display. However, if this doesn’t scratch that itch I would recommend: Requiem for the Enchanted Forest or Quantum Computer Deep Dream.
Mentions (not without honor just without text)
In A Landscape by Max Ricther (Decca Recordings)
Mruma by Michiru Aoyama (Bullflat3.8)
Migratory by Masayoshi Fujita (Erased Tapes)
Void XXVI by Chihei Hatakeyama (White Paddy Mountain)