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.
Sleep Deprivation by The Black Dog (Dust Science)
Just in time for the onset of winter and socio-political dread, the Dust brothers return with one of their strongest records in years. They’ve hung up the kick drums on this one, leaving behind their techno tendencies and settling into a darker ambient space. Sleep Deprivation conveys the unsettling state of its namesake. The record was made, harnessing the after-effects of playing late night gigs, traveling, and following this thread until the mind begins to unravel. The liner notes state that the group “…surrendered to that experience, letting the emotional chaos shape the music, and the result is an exploration of what happens when you’re pushed to your limits, both physically and creatively.”
On first pass the music clearly has ambient underpinnings, but throwing on a pair of headphones reveals a greater depth to the songs. They are rich with textures and weirdness that hide low in the mix. It adds to that feeling of 4AM, where strange shapes flutter in your periphery, then disperse into shadow when your eyes give chase. It’s music for those somber hours when uncertainty invades you, and you’re walking on the razor’s edge between sleep and a psychedelic experience. Communing with none but the ghosts, in this tenuous peace, it’s hard to speak to possibility and its vaporous bag of tricks.
The presence of strings in some of these arrangements immediately makes one think of Stars of the Lid, but the songs on this album are as varied as The Black Dog’s discography. They’ve got the paranoid atmospheres dialed in from their time making their politically-conscious records Neither/Neither, Post-Truth, and Black Daisy Wheel. Though there are plenty of familiar sounds, the album stands separate from their other work in its tone. The closest comparison we have is Music For Real Airports––which might fit nicely under the same umbrella of music touched by sleep-starved states, but Sleep Deprivation lacks the cyclical shape of the songs present on that album. The music meanders and drifts, leaving the listener in an untethered state. In this nether zone of consciousness, our ears float in a liminal state to be drawn toward nothing in particular or to see our lives reflected in this slowly rotating world of mirrors.
Piedras 1 & 2 by Nicolas Jaar (Other People)
Whether he is working under his own name, as Against All Logic, or contributing to his band Darkside, Nicolas Jaar’s sonic aesthetic is clear as day. However, on this double album, we find Jaar in mid-mutation. The aesthetic embellishments are obviously there, but he stretches his sonic vocabulary to its furthest reaches and gathers in all he can hold.
Piedras 1 & 2 collects music composed for a radio play called Archivos de Radio Piedras, which tells the story of a near future where two friends use a DIY radiostation to mourn the disappearance of their friend, artist and writer Salina’s Hasbún. The play was later converted into an installation at the University Museum of Mexico City. The source material, linked above, merits a listen all on its own––even if you don’t understand Spanish––as it is a further display of Jaar’s talent as a sound designer. Each act not only has original music, but unique atmospheres, treating the actors’ performances to match the environments they occupy.
These pieces have had a long life prior to being collected for this double LP, but Jaar finds a way to present this material so it stands tall on its own. There’s a reggaeton influence that is most obvious across Piedras 1. Piedras 2 tends more toward the experimental, using some of the ambiance that floats around the performances in the play. The radio drama weaves together a story about Chile’s military dictatorship, the genocide currently being waged in the Middle East, and while drawing parallels between these two events, poses the question about belonging and who gets to decide what history tells us about a place. For more than that, you’ll need someone fluent in Spanish. Even though these two discs offer an abridged, incomplete version of the original performance, Jaar still manages to paint a compelling story with the tools in his possession.
FAÇADISMS by Rafael Anton Irisarri (Black Knoll Editions)
I’m a big fan of noisey ambient music. There’s something powerfully comforting about the fuzzy full-spectrum roar of these types of songs. It’s akin to laying your head down during a long flight, and letting the endless vibration of the fuselage turn your body into dust.
On Façadisms, this sensation takes center stage through the majority of the songs. Whether we begin this way, as on “Broken Intensification,” or we reach it by riding a crescendo like an escalator into a very powerful light–– “Control Your Soul’s Desire for Freedom”–– Irisarri uses this device to great effect. Even when we snatch some clarity from the muck of the drone, it draws our attention to what is missing, and leaves us longing for the comfort of an overdriven plate reverb––or whatever that sound actually is. Inspired by the illusion that the American ruling class projects onto the rest of us, where the poor toil tirelessly to further enshrine the greed of our oppressors, Façadisms provides sound to that space between their American Dream and our lived American Myth.
Honorable Mentions
Tension by Mulatu Astatke and Hoodna Orchestra (Batov Records)
Tel Aviv’s Hoodna Orchestra have long been fans of Mulatu Astatke’s ethio-jazz, and in early 2023 they invited him to their city to record and perform. The result is a bolstering of Astatke’s signature sound, given quite a bit more gas by the twelve piece band behind him. The Hoodna Orchestra does much more than worship at the feet of their idol––though there is plenty of Astatke’s tell-tale vibraphone, they manage to collaborate and create a sound that is entirely unique to this record. The stand out piece to this end is “Major,” a wholloping feature that takes the whole band out for a stroll. This song was apparently recorded at the end of their session, their chemistry at their peak and on full display. It makes me hopeful that the band will get back together with Astatke for another round of similarly inspired songs.
dessus oben alto up by Andreas Belfi and Julia Reidy (Marionette)
The Berlin-based artists combine their efforts using drums, guitar, and electronics. An aura of ritual hangs over the recording, as it moves forward in a methodical and deliberate pace. Some of the structural elements are reminiscent of Terry Riley. There are peaks here and there that rise from the circular performances, mostly forecast by the drums and an uptick in the burbling of electronics. The music builds much like a raga, around a basic framework the two artists are able to improvise and give life to the core elements of basic melodic foundation. Calling to mind the performances of Oren Ambarchi, this record weaves together a rich tapestry of electro-acoustic elements into a swirling hypnotic performance.
Calm –– for Radar Systems by Approaching Mountains (self-released)
I’m in a mental space right now where I’m hungry for atmospherics, and that might be why I’ve had a more myopic article than I normally do. So, here’s another one that is all mood. The music features lush arrangements that slowly dissolve into fuzzy, choked out bursts of noise. With a palette of synths, guitars, and field recordings, the artist creates spaces of shifting dynamics, bringing focus to certain elements while obfuscating others. Despite the cohesive nature of the album, there is a variety to the songwriting structures, instrumentation, and the use of shifting spatial elements to play with the listener’s perceptions. One second a saxophone may be sweetly singing, and the next it will be swallowed by the screaming crescendo of vibrating sheet metal. A wall of fuzz may hum itself to full height, and as it collapses a lush mist of synth pads takes its place. The music serves as a reminder of how quickly our reality can shift, and that the solid footing we think we have is more granular than we tend to allow ourselves to realize.
Mentions (not without honor, just without text)
Ash by Taylor Deupree (Nettwerk)
Echo Chamber Music 01 by JK Flesh (Avalanche Recordings)
forge by KMRU (Seil Records)
101, Milky Way by Klaus Schulze (SPV Recordings)