Photo Credit: Dana D // Hair/Makeup: Zina Gladiadis
“It’s cool to depend on yourself and come out the other side and be like ‘cool, I did that.’” So says Ridgewood-based ambient experimental artist M. Maria. She is on the cusp of dropping her debut EP Saturn Returned, from which she premieres single “There’s A Spirit In My Body” on Audiofemme today. Entirely self-produced and recorded, it is yet another example of a project only dreamt about pre-pandemic but actualized once we were forced to stay home.
“Before the pandemic hit, I really wanted to make an album, but I hadn’t spent enough time in it to where I really understood how to record music, how to produce it,” M. Maria explains. “I feel like as soon as we had time to be by ourselves and shut the world out, I was able to just go straight into Ableton, just progressing and getting better until I had actual results.”
Though she began learning Ableton Basics and tinkering with the idea of making music two years ago or so, it wasn’t until she turned 27 that the urge really took over, in alignment with the astrological phenomenon from which the EP gets its name (the infamous Saturn Return is when the planet reaches the same celestial position it was in when we were born, approaching in our late twenties and making its impact felt through our early thirties). “It’s supposed to realign your life in a way, and make you go through these extreme changes, to be on a path that can better serve you,” M. Maria explains. “As soon as I hit 27, I was like, I need to do something. I need to make music. I felt this astrological push, and everything around that period going in a direction that felt more real, and more like it was supposed to be, you know? Sorry if I sound insane.” She laughs.
The resulting music is darkly ethereal, with M. Maria utilizing her high-octave voice as an otherworldly instrument, layered over darker, industrial elements. “I like that contrast so I like playing with it a lot,” she says.
“There’s A Spirit In My Body” begins sparsely, with only vocals and a light beat, and slowly different beats and vocal elements are introduced to build into a heavier, layered sound. It brings to mind the likes of Grouper or Holly Herndon, though M. Maria lists shoegaze bands like My Bloody Valentine and A.R. Kane as her greatest influences. The influence is there, but the creative decision to use the voice more as an instrument than a vehicle for delivering lyrics takes the sound to another world. The emotionality lies in the delivery, not the words themselves.
“I feel like I have trouble expressing with actual words,” she explains. “When I’m feeling something, I start singing, and just having the sound of my voice be an expression, even when it’s not saying something. I feel like the voice can express so much with noise.”
Having mixed and produced the EP, each song is a creation all her own. As she preps for release later this summer, and for her first live shows, M. Maria expresses some apprehension around releasing her first creative endeavor into the world. At the same time, though, she recognizes that Saturn Returned is only the beginning, and confidence in her potential provides some relief from that pressure. “There’s going be so much more to build off of it,” she says.
“This is a weird time,” Alex Paquet tells me as we sit down over coffee to talk about his musical project, Field Sleeper. “I’m not usually this bright of a person. There was a very long time – a good year and a half – where I was ultra-sensorially attentive and very, very calm. And it’s still all bursting out right now.”
I feel lucky to have caught Paquet during this period of his life. Throughout our interview, his thoughts, interests, and experiences really do seem like they are bursting out; though I try to wrap up the interview after 50 minutes, we keep talking long after, trading favorite contemporary artists, theory, and installations. We laugh over a picture I took at the Columbus Museum of Art, at an exhibit that Paquet found particularly moving. The photo is of a tag, written on by a museum passer-by, which reads: “I don’t often view creative professional men as creative types, so it’s nice to see a stern man softly.” Paquet says that he often feels stern-er than most, but when I apologize for keeping him so long, he reassures me that he’s happy to have made a new friend, which doesn’t feel stern at all. We part ways in the rain; Paquet catches the bus to get to a nail appointment, and I take a damp walk to the library, Field Sleeper’s upcoming record streaming through my ear buds.
That record, Better Grid, which is slated for release on Scioto Records on March 16, walks the line between stern and soft exceptionally well. A blend of pop, rock, drone, and even jazz-inspired elements, the album highlights Paquet’s gift for musical arrangement. And as compared to previous musical projects, Paquet tells me, Better Grid was “a lot more purposeful, and I was trying to use as few voices as possible in each. I’d also played the songs a lot more – the songs have a lot more personal attachment to me.” In order to give the album a feeling of “performance,” Paquet tracked each component as though he was giving a recital, playing all of the guitar parts at once, and then the vocals, and then the synths, and so on. “I was really inspired by jazz recordings,” he says. “It seemed like there were less tricks – it seemed so clear.” The level of clarity which Paquet perceives in jazz–which he also calls musical efficiency–was integral to the making of Better Grid. Paquet tells me that he focused on giving each component enough space for the audience to fully engage. “A big question that I had to ask a lot,” Paquet says, “is, if this is here, what isn’t someone paying attention to?”
Though Paquet approached the record with intent to strip songs down, handling each sound and “voice” with care, the actual recording process he tells me, “happened by feeling; it wasn’t by design.” Paquet was first approached about recording by Groove U, a music-career specialization program in Columbus, in the fall of 2016. That, Paquet tells me, got him thinking about recording a full album. He recorded the first five songs of what would become Better Grid in February of 2016, during a period of his life where, he tells me, he just wanted to get some songs down to learn more about them. Then, after an East Coast tour in June, Paquet came back to Better Grid, recording four more songs for the project (one song, out of the nine recorded, never made it on the album). “Maybe what the recording can represent is trying to learn what’s really going on with the set of songs,” Paquet says. He calls the period of time spent on Better Grid the “cognitive height” of Field Sleeper. It encompasses “a lot of tours,” he says, “and a lot of time spent making music and thinking about making music.”
After Paquet was done with his recording, the album was mixed by Mike Shiflet, a noise musician and avant-gardist who Paquet calls “the big time.” Shiflet “had a really big impact,” Paquet says, “on how the thing sounds. There are some tracks, like on ‘Shed,’ where the vocals are panned really hard to one side and the guitar is on the opposite – that was all him.”
Now that all of the recording and mixing is over, Paquet says that listening to Better Grid “can honestly calm me down sometimes.” Still, Paquet is conscious of how he wants the project to evolve onstage. “When I was recording it,” he says, “I think I took too much life out of it… Now, I’m trying to think [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][about] how much more life I can bring into it, and then I know that if push comes to shove I can rely on whatever it took to make.” Onstage, Paquet plays with a rotating cast of musicians and collaborators, including Felix O’Connor, Seth Daily, Kyle Kerley, and Dylan Reese. It’s a lot of people to juggle, but Paquet says that he relies on his collaborators to “bring different things out in me, and to learn more about the songs that I’ve written.” Bringing out something new in his songs, Paquet says, is part of the “joy” of collaboration. And he’s learning to let go a bit on stage by placing faith in his colleagues. “I need to, in some way, push myself or get myself feeling uncomfortable,” he says. “There’s excitement to that, and to seeing other people do that.”
It’s clear that Paquet brings just as much intentionality to the stage as he does to his bedroom recording. “There’s a very important way that performance can make someone feel better, and it’s not just all about me,” he explains. Beyond the audience, Paquet is also thinking more and more about what it means to be a band member. “I’m excited to write songs now because I can think more about what song would fit what group,” he tells me. “It still all just feels like a time to experiment I guess.”
all photos by Kaiya Gordon
With the making of Better Grid behind him, Paquet seems bursting with possibility. He tells me about the new approaches to lyrics he wants to try: spending hours chasing one image; focusing smaller scenes; writing about the world around him. “It’s really easy to become, I think, cyclically secure in yourself, if you write about yourself,” he says. “It’s important, I think, to keep reminding yourself how little you know.” He lays out plans for bringing his quantitative skills to the art world (the NEA, he reminds me, has whole sections of grants looking at how art impacts communities), and talks about the position he has as assistant to the maestro at Opera Project Columbus. For somebody who just told me he “took the life” out of his upcoming album, Paquet seems to have a lot of life left in him. “I’m just trying not to be so exhausted,” he says. “I want to be more personal, I want to be more relaxed. I want to see what comes out of that.” Recently, Paquet tells me, a friend made a basketball metaphor about creation that really stuck with him. “Toward the end of the game when you’re more fatigued you’re more likely to go for the first shot you can take,” he says, “whereas, if you weren’t fatigued, you might wait for one more pass back and forth before you do it.”
There are several upcoming passes that Paquet seems poised to make. Over the winter break he spent time writing with O’Connor and Reese, focusing on collaboration, rather than just practical skill. Paquet says the three of them spent time considering whether a musical piece felt good to them or not, often asking themselves “is there a better way to play this, rather than one that just fits into the grid of everything that is already presented?” Based on Paquet’s re-telling of the practices, it suited them all; Paquet felt able to change his parts to “let something else shine more,” resulting in “new songwriting and sonic possibilities.” They “felt like a band,” he says.
But Paquet isn’t done with solo songwriting, either. “I would also, before the end of this year, make a hard drone ambient album,” he tells me. “I’d like to give some performances of just classical guitar pieces too […] rather than trying to put all [styles] into one thing.” He pauses, thinking about the album. “I know it’s my thing,” he continues, “but, it’s pretty cool.”
Catch Field Sleeper in Columbus this Thursday, February 22nd at 9pm at Kafe Keroac, or at one of their upcoming stops on tour:
Mar 10 Philadelphia @ All Night Diner
Mar 11 NYC @ Lantern Hall
Mar 12 Providence @ TBA
Mar 13 Boston @ TBA
Mar 14 Portland ME @ TBA
Mar 15 Troy NY @ River Street Pub
Mar 16 Buffalo @ The Modeling Factory
Mar 17 Cleveland @ Mahall’s
Mar 29 Album Release @ Ace of Cups[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
Brooklyn-based Rene Kladzyk is Ziemba, a powerhouse of creative genius and freedom. She creates powerful music, visceral music videos, and experiments with fragrances in her performance and digital releases. She aims to transcend yet accentuate the human experience and our senses. Her work is honest, inspiring, and uplifting and she realizes her creative vision by conceptualizing the symbolism in situations and life experiences.
She is a presence with a starry energy that radiates. I recently had the pleasure of experiencing her performance at Knockdown Center in Queens, a bill she shared with the Charlie Looker Ensemble and Pavo Pavo. The Charlie Looker Ensemble started the night off with an echoing intensity. Ziemba took to the stage and cleansed our pallets as two ladies fluttered throughout the audience, misting us with scents that shaped the atmosphere and guided the vibe. I felt as if it brought the audience together to the same plane of experience. Kladzyk has an intuitive stage presence and utilizes as much of the space as possible to maintain attention and flow of energy.
Her debut full-length album Hope is Never was recorded in upstate New York at Black Dirt Studios with Jason Meagher and released via Lo & Behold! Records in 2016. She accompanied the album with a multi-sensory element by pairing it with incense containing notes of cedar, lilac, and lilies of the valley picked from the overgrowth surrounding her childhood home in Forestville, Michigan, where the video for “With the Fire” was filmed.
The album is rooted in the sensations of nostalgia and melancholy. Loss, destruction, and processing death are themes in these songs. She turned me on to the music of Jerry Yester and Judy Henske with her rendition of their song “Rapture.” She beautifully and cinematically interprets this song and created for it a music video that is vivid with color and lush scenery. She said she wanted to make a video that was as fun to watch as it was to create, adding an element of hope to otherwise dismal subject matter.
Soon after, she released another 4 track EP inspired by a perspective not her own: the perspective of a cave dwelling succubus. LALA, a play on the Berber slang term for a female saint, is a representation of imperialist tensions with feminism, and archetypes of feminine empowerment through sexuality. It is the first official release from the Ardis Multiverse, a “multi-sensory imprint,” creative alliance, and synesthetic platform pioneered by Kladzyk herself.
She proves to be prolific in sonic fragrance experimentation with “A Door Into Ocean,” an ambient track released in March. It’s named after the feminist science fiction novel by Joan Slonczewski about a planet that is populated entirely by women. There is no land, just water. This track also features the LIGO chirp, which is the sound of gravitational waves as two black holes collide. Its limited edition fragrance companion is composed of sensuous waves of ylan ylang, alder wood, Texas cedar wood, and stargazer lily.
She sat down with Audiofemme over some tea and records to expound upon LALA as a concept, fragrance, and what is next in her creative journey.
What inspired you or made you realize you wanted to create a multi-sensory experience with your music?
Well, I come from a background in feminist geography, and I think that as a performer I’ve always been very attentive to space, the spatial experience of sound, and the context I foster around a song. Thinking about making work in ways that are multi-sensory is a natural extension of this interest. Why is music powerful? Because it conjures feeling, it has the power to transform space and time, or even make you feel lost in a moment. I’m interested in enhancing that transportive capacity of music, of thinking of new ways to encourage audiences to engage in the sound. That they have many entry points for how they can build a web of associations, or approach the ephemeral world of a song – that’s a guiding mission for me.
How do you utilize fragrance in your live performances?
I’ve been increasingly using fragrance in live performance, and my curiosity and excitement about it keeps growing. I recently did a performance installation with artist Soojin Chang that was centered on activating emotional responses from the use of fragrance, and my last music show in NYC at Knockdown Center involved a series of timed fragrances, misted around the audience in association with specific song worlds. I’m also an artist-in-residence with art/science organization Guerilla Science and have been creating work for their fire organ. That performance will be coming up in the fall and will involve a fragrance that is changing in direct relation to the music. Meaning that I’m building an apparatus inside of the organ so that specific frequencies will trigger specific fragrance components, and the overall experience will be one in which the fragrance is a constantly undulating, evolving experience directly connected to the transformations and undulations of the sound. It’s an exciting project, and I can’t wait to share it.
Can you explain what exactly is the Ardis Multiverse?
Well, as a human, I just love to name and compartmentalize stuff, so Ardis Multiverse is a name I put on something that is actually very abstract and amorphous. “Ardis” literally means the point of an arrow, so an ardis is a nexus point for time and space, something flying through a landscape of metaphysic and material meaning. I think about making music in this way. One time I did a performance with Colin Self where we chanted we are the meaning makers, and that makes us weapon creators. And that’s how I feel about writing music, the process of generating shared meaning; it’s a similar experience to targeting and releasing an arrow. Then the concept of a multiverse relies on a premise of multiplicity, simultaneity, and kind of our big-picture way we decide to define reality.
So Ardis Multiverse is both a name that I’ve applied to my multi-sensory releases and also a growing platform/ alliance for artists who are interested in investigating the multi-sensory, expansive possibilities for sharing their work. I’m interested in having more dialogues with artists about how we create sonic artifacts in the digital age of music. Walter Benjamin’s famous essay on art in the age of endless reproducibility talks about the loss of the “aura” in creative works, that this is a symptom of mass production. And so many musicians feel this dilemma; that the experience of buying a mp3 isn’t very romantic. I want to talk to more artists and musicians who are approaching their work like urban planners, who are thinking in terms of scale and interconnectivity across space and time. My goal is to facilitate that in performance, material objects, and whatever other ephemera happens along the way.
Have you ever experienced synesthesia? What is a favorite scent of yours that evokes a memory?
I think everyone experiences synesthesia, but the question is whether or not they are identifying that experience as such, or to what extent they experience it. And to what extent they train themselves to ignore it, and force a false distinction between sensory information. Nabokov said when he was talking about his grapheme-color synesthesia: “It’s called color hearing. Perhaps one in a thousand has that. But I’m told by psychologists that most children have it, that later they lose that aptitude when they are told by stupid parents that it’s all nonsense, an A isn’t black, a B isn’t brown.”
It’s perhaps similar to the way we distinguish thinking and feeling. We know there is a difference in the process, but they exist in concert with one another. That’s how senses interact with each other. They all work together to create context and association.
I used to work with blind people, back when I was a researcher for this lab that did tactile and soundscape mapping. And when I did that job I talked to a lot of people about perception and sight. When you interact with a blind person about the way that they conceive space, how they organize spatial information in their mind and then navigate the world accordingly, you realize how much work the brain is doing all the time just to get you from point A to point B. Senses necessarily swirl around each other when you build a mental map, and we do that constantly without considering it. It’s rote. I think synesthesia is so rote that most people take it 100% for granted.
And then when you do something that exacerbates those swirling connections between the senses, like the work I’ve been making, it’s fun and playful because it reminds people that the boxes we have put around these different parts of the human experience are totally malleable.
A favorite memory scent for me is the smell of lilacs. When I was a kid we had a lilac tree right outside of our back door, and so in the spring, I would smell that scent right when I walked outside for the first time every day. It’s such a beautiful scent, and when this time of year rolls around I get so happy to be able to smell lilacs. It’s very very nostalgic. When I made my album incense it was extremely important to me that it had lilacs in it, so much so that I had the neighbors at my childhood home updating me on the status of the lilac bloom so that I made sure to time my trip correctly and get them at the right moment. It ended up working perfectly. I started out my tour last summer with a trip to my sweet decrepit childhood home to pick flowers, and everything was in such crazy bloom I couldn’t believe it. I think picking flowers is possibly the number one most therapeutic activity for a touring musician.
Have you always wanted to be an artist? Did you have creative outlets growing up?
No, not really. “Artist” is a label I embrace kind of reluctantly. It’s so vague, and most of the associations with it are brutal and miserable. I think I’d prefer to have a long list of specific descriptors on my epitaph, rather than “artist.” Plus the rules governing what gets to count as art are so dumb, patriarchal, and capitalistic. I’m not looking for the key into the art world, and I’d rather be a pioneer or a volcano, if not just a nice person.
But I have always expressed myself creatively, in one form or another. Even back when I would have identified myself more as a scientist. I don’t view being an artist and being a scientist all that differently. I’m working with my sister, who is a civil engineer, on the mapping component of the new Ziemba album, and that can be seen as an indication of my attitude toward what gets to count as art or science, truth or fiction.
I had a lot of creative outlets as a kid. My sister and I staged elaborate backyard plays, and I was constantly singing and making up songs. The other day I remembered this rule that my babysitter had made for me: “no singing at the table or you’ll get your ear pulled.” I started laughing so hard, because it had never occurred to me how annoying I must have been. I started playing the piano when I was around three because my sister had started lessons that year and I looked up to her so much that when she would practice I would try to emulate her. And I would say that reading has always been a massive creative outlet to me. Since I was very young I’ve been an avid reader, and tend to get pretty disassociated when I read because I become so lost in the world of that book.
How do you feel liberated or hindered living as an artist in New York?
Living in New York has been tremendously nurturing and liberating in terms of actually building a life as an artist. I know most people would probably say like the cost of living or something is a hindrance to being an artist in New York, but for me, I’ve always been broke and I wasn’t always this productive. I’m so grateful for the amazing artists who I am privileged to call my friends and to be constantly surrounded by people who inspire me and push me to dig deeper, to overflow. There is a palpable feeling of opportunity here, and it’s so encouraging.
What messages are you trying to convey in your work?
I often describe my music as a battle against nihilism, and that’s a very recurrent message you can find. I try to reveal pathways for hope and connection. I’m interested in uplifting people, in facilitating moments that can even be transcendent or ecstatic. I think it’s important that creators consider the energies they are proliferating in the world, and though I frequently explore painful subject matter, the intention is always to be helpful. I’d like the music, performances, materials that I make to all be supportive or delicious in some way. I don’t make the work for me, and I also don’t especially claim ownership over it. My goal is normally to see how radically I can set an idea free, to enable it to stand up on its own legs and do its own thing, and then I can watch it grow as this autonomous beast. I try not to get attached to outcomes, and instead cultivate feelings, to have the sensation of it be the actual thing. Bachelard describes the poetic instant as a form of vertical time because when you are experiencing a moment of profound poetry your sense of time can shift and expand. That’s what I’m after, a way to treat time like taffy and stretch out some glorious instant of connection.
What is your process for conceptualizing music videos? Do you have a videographer/team you often collaborate with?
I frequently work with my sister Anna, and my dear friend and collaborator Corey Tatarczuk on music videos. The three of us are all wackos, and normally the process for conceiving of a music video is a mixture of improvisation and brainstorming sessions. Even though the “With the Fire” video was different. The idea for that video came to me when I was driving in Arkansas, and I had to pull off the road because I got so overwhelmed with the vision of it that I couldn’t drive straight. It made me cry just to think about doing it, that it was possible.
What is your writing/recording process?
It’s all over the place. I have at least five different notebooks going at any one time and write songs in all sorts of different ways. Same goes for recording. I’ve recorded in many different configurations, in different types of studios, at home solo, you name it. Today I was recording in my bedroom and got my sister to send me an audio sample of her puppy barking, and now it’s in the chorus of my next disco hit. It’s all a big whimsy trip.
Do you have a set group of musicians you frequently collaborate with in the studio? Is it the same group in live performances?
The past couple times that I’ve gone into the studio it’s been solo, though there are some people who have a more permanent role in Ziemba. My sister is a key collaborator, and Rob Smith, who played drums on my album, is a dear friend and treasured collaborator. He plays live with me sometimes but is in several other active bands so it can be tricky to schedule. I play solo a lot and have a rotating cast of amazing musicians who have joined me on tours or for shows.
How did LALA manifest and make herself known to you?
I wrote the songs unintentionally from someone’s perspective that was not my perspective. Several years ago I went to Morocco for an artist residency and I first became acquainted with a hero cult figure named Aisha Kandisha. Some people say that she once lived in the time of the colonizers and would lure the colonizers away from their encampments with her beauty and murder them. For others, she is purely a spirit, and appears to men as a beautiful naked woman with camel feet.
For women, it’s a blessing if you’re possessed by her because she is this source of empowerment through sexuality. If a man is possessed by her he can never love another woman. I met a lot of men in Morocco who were married to the spirit of Aisha Kandisha. I found her fascinating and I was at her pilgrimage site, which I didn’t know beforehand. I knew I was going to a pilgrimage site to witness these ceremonies because I was interested in gnawa and djalali music, which is associated with the ceremonies that happened there.
A couple of years later I took a seminar on decadence and symbolism in fin de siecle literature. I encountered the book SHE by H. Rider Haggard that was a major hit in the late 1800’s. It’s about this character that is exactly like Aisha Kandisha. It’s a very much an imperialist western European fantasy of the exotic woman. She is this spirit that dwells in caves and she is a curse for men and her powers are located in her sexuality. I got very fixated on this figure and the archetype of the femme fatale and sexuality as a form of currency. All of the issues that it’s dealing with are not gone. We don’t know how to deal with women using sexuality as a form of power and feminists don’t know how to.
What is in LALA‘s fragrance? How does it enhance the experience?
I’m in a process of discovery with making fragrances. The way that I’m approaching it is not scientific. It’s much more intuitive. I wanted those songs to have a fragrance as a form of psychic energetic protection so that it could just be a positive experience.There are a number of reasons that I chose particular elements to include, including the color of the materials. I read about color associations that are symbolic and helpful. But it’s not a purely uplifting incense. It’s actually kind of a hard fragrance in some ways, kind of sickly sweet but also kind of metallic or alien. It’s not a fragrance I would burn on a date.
Can you talk a little bit about your upcoming album?
The album is called ARDIS which is connected to the Ardis Multiverse. It’s a parallel universe. It’s like earth if the necessary changes were made. It’s inspired by feminist science fiction. I’m working on a mapping project with my sister, meaning we are building a world from faux GPS data and bringing other artists in as well. I’m reluctant to get too specific because we are still testing out different things. But I will let you know, if you knew where to look you could access the recent release, “A Door into Ocean” through a specific point on the ocean floor on Google Earth. There are going to be a lot of portals on earth to access ARDIS. This next album is very much political commentary but the way it’s manifesting for me is trying to make something that’s very joyous and uplifting.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
Eno is a name long associated with experimentation, versatility, and subversiveness (and great production, of course). In the wake of recent musical and political events – the deaths of many progressive and influential musicians, including frequent collaborator David Bowie, and the rise of conservatism in the UK – a new Brian Eno piece feels especially poignant and significant. Reflection follows the same rules and systems of most of Eno’s ambient productions, or generative music as he calls it. The term “generative”, coined by Eno in the 90s, refers to music that is ever-changing and generated by a system, like a computer. This technological aspect of Reflection inspired an app that can be downloaded in place of buying the album. The app has an audio visualizer that changes as the music slowly shifts tones based on the time of day.
After I stumbled across this bizarre, intriguing interview, I felt I had to meditate on the ambiguous, yet apparently political nature of this album and the manner in which seemingly inoffensive music can be political.
I think it’s important to note the indefinable quality of albums like this. Fundamentally, can we call it an album? Holding true to its title, Reflection harks back to Eno’s 1985 Thursday Afternoon in its design. It’s one continual piece of music that moves through nearly an hour of time. Is it one song? One track? That language doesn’t really fit this music and to think of Reflection the way we might a regular album doesn’t work. Expectantly, Brian Eno is trying to push beyond the limitations of a “record”. Generative music, by Eno’s own definition, is primarily structural and mechanical, and part of its inspiration comes from linguistic theory, So, like linguistics, structural, generative work is also surprisingly progressive, full of movement, and difficult to pin down. But the important question: does this kind of music work? Does it break restrictions in a way that is memorable and meaningful?
Here I have to admit a strong affection for Brian Eno’s music, past and present. Here Come the Warm Jets will always be mind-blowing and original with its juxtaposition of melody and dissonance, order and nonsensical chaos. More relevantly, his work on David Bowie’s Berlin trilogy included some fantastic, atmospheric ambient tracks like “Warszawa” (from Low) and “Neukölln” (from Heroes). These songs have an ability to instill an intense and almost visual mood. They’re cathartic and emotive but with no clear meaning or trajectory. This flexibility can actually make the tracks more touching, personal, and imaginative.
I think of Eno’s newer, generative music like an isolation tank: there’s a kind of forced reflection. Like Fripp & Eno, it’s the sort of music you can lie on the floor next to a friend, close your eyes, and listen to – a disparate, yet shared experience. There’s definitely a comforting aspect to the slow, steady design and, particularly, the lower, darker notes in Reflection. But there’s also something that nears over-stimulation – and discomfort – in a deep listen. Its simplicity, its malleability somehow becomes forceful.
In that interview I mentioned, Eno spoke passionately about Brexit and Donald Trump and, thereby, the ways in which his music is political. What he said could strike as absurd or profound:
“I’m interested in the idea of generative music as a sort of model for how society or politics could work. I’m working out the ideas I’m interested in, about how you make a working society rather than a dysfunctional one like the one we live in at the moment – by trying to make music in a new way. I’m trying to see what kinds of models and and structures make the music I want to hear, and then I’m finding it’s not a bad idea to try to think about making societies in that way.”
The article goes on to explain what he means. As opposed to a classical orchestra, society should be built on the more egalitarian model of a folk or rock band, who just get together and do their thing.
These are some provocative words. It’s difficult to think of Reflection, an album with no words and no prescriptiveness, as political. But re-listening, with these words in mind, makes the structural elements of the album more noticeable and thereby, more suggestive and, as I said before, forceful.
Simple as a piece of music, Reflection is perfect for thinkers and daydreamers. Personally, I love this sound. It’s slow and steady, but adaptable and never droning. The subtle, changing melodies on this record are delightfully easy to digest. Like the title of another Eno album (or two) Music For Airplanes, this record is great to listen to in the car or train as you look out the window. The deeper notes that wiggle in throughout are crisp and inspiring. However, I wouldn’t call this easy listening. It takes a certain amount of focus, or prior knowledge of the genre, to give it a good listen.
So, to answer my question from earlier: absolutely yes, ambient music can be memorable and meaningful simply because of its experimental and progressive nature. Like poetry or theater, it may become easier and more rewarding to take in as it sheds the limitations of musical definition. However, it might take a certain frame of mind to reach those conclusions. That is to say, it’s not for everyone. The idea of music (and perhaps specifically ambient music) standing as blueprint for building a society may be seen as absurd by some, but at this point in time it’s an alternative that we might want to consider. Many of us have intense, inexplicable relationships with music that already help to shape our lives. We’re also exhausted by systems that have been put in place over years and years. Following the construction of more harmonious and well-balanced music collectives and systems might not be such a wild idea.
Reflection is available for you to listen to on the app or as a regular record.
“My whole life just seemed like a cloud of fog,” Rosie Carney states frankly on her website, sharing explicit details about the pain she’s experienced: bullying, sexual assaults, an eating disorder, being dropped from a major label at the age of seventeen. Now twenty, it’s no wonder Carney, who hails from Ireland, has such a haunting voice. But on her single “Awake Me,” lyrics like “I’ve been a fool for more than half of my life, I’ve tried to hide/ Awake me,” seem to show that she is confronting andovercoming her past. Not that she needs to claim any great sorrow to be taken seriously as a singer – she’s able to express multitudes even when her voice hovers close to a whisper, and create mountains of tension just by lingering on a pause. All that accompanies her voice are simple, repetitive guitar arpeggios, but as her voice ascends higher and higher in spirals toward the end of the song, it’s easy to imagine her leaving behind the fog, the bullies, the stigma of mental illness – everything.
Find some release and resolve in the gorgeous track below:
When Brian Eno first got the idea to make Ambient 1/Music For Airports, he was indeed within such a place: the Cologne Bonn Airport in Germany, to be exact. His goal was to make music to “accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular” according to the record’s liner notes. This music would be “as ignorable as it is interesting,” ultimately neutralizing the chaotic and tense microcosm that is an airline terminal, or as I like to call it, hell on earth.
The record itself is many things: soothing, transcendent, gorgeous, subtle…adjectives which today, almost 40 years after the release of Music For Airports, are light-years from capturing the foul, soul-sucking, hyper-capitalistic essence of even the “nicest” plane parking lots.
Eno, completely aware of the hectic, complex world of the airport, wanted to make music that addressed the specific needs of such a space, and he didn’t mince words when explaining those needs. In an interview from a few decades ago, he describes his inspiration in greater depth.
“It came from a specific experience. I was in a beautiful airport…Cologne Airport, which is a very beautiful building. Early one Sunday morning, the light was beautiful; everything was beautiful, except they were playing awful music. And I thought, ‘there’s something completely wrong that people don’t think about the music that goes into situations like this.’ You know, they spend hundreds of millions of pounds on the architecture, on everything, except the music. The music comes down to someone bringing in a tape of their favorite songs this week and sticking them in and the whole airport is filled with this sound. So, I thought it’d be interesting to actually start writing music for public spaces like that.”
While I personally feel that Eno achieved the perfect score to flight on Music For Airports, I can’t say that such an approach has been applied to actual airports. While we may no longer endure the cheesy corporate muzak or “elevator music” of the 80s and 90s (now reserved exclusively for healthcare company hold music), the sonic output of terminals remains troubling in a whole new way. Take for instance my experience at Chicago O’Hare International Airport a few weeks ago, whereupon sitting on the toilet in the Gate B bathroom I heard not Enya or Brian Eno, but “Stars of Track and Field” by Belle and Sebastian.
Come again?
This set off another memory. I was on a Delta flight to Brazil, and, being bored with the pre-takeoff formalities, decided to scroll through the in-flight music they offered. To my surprise, they not only had The Queen is Dead by The Smiths, but also Post Pop Depression, Iggy Pop’s latest record, as well as other albums by what marketing experts would deem “indies.”
Though I shouldn’t have been, I must admit I was surprised. Air travel is the last bastion (aside from perhaps hotel services and high-end dining) of the old-fashioned, uniformed business structure; the security, composure of the flight attendants, the caste system set in place by the boarding/seating matrix…the whole ambiance makes it a bit strange that they would supply passengers with Iggy Pop singing about Gardenia’s “hourglass ass.” Even though I found it both convenient and pleasurable that such tunes were available, I was also disturbed by it. Isn’t it slightly insulting to stick me in seat 23 B back by the shitter, make me pay for stale pretzels, and then pretend that you, Delta Airlines, knows about Iggy Pop?
But contrary to Eno’s airport in the ‘70s, it must be said that airlines today overthink about what is playing aboard. It isn’t breaking news that airports, which are basically glorified, overpriced shopping malls, picked up on the same marketing strategies that make us feel cool when we buy a certain brand of soap over another. The reason Delta Airlines has the new Iggy Pop record is the same reason American Airlines replaced schmaltzy muzak with “indie rock” to score-boarding and landing periods.
It’s the exact principle laid out inCommodify Your Dissent, a collection of essays from The Baffler addressing how the initial emblems of counterculture rebellion (i.e. rock music, leather jackets, tofu) have now become the tools of advertisers, CEOs, and the like. In a brilliant essay by Dave Mulcahey entitled “Leadership and You,” the author quotes Andrew Susman’s book Advertising Age:
“The inter-relationship of advertising and programming increase because customer tastes and preferences are known in advance. Programming and advertising become interchangeable, as consumers are living inside a perpetual marketing event.”
Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
Perhaps Mr. Eno could resurface to make us a new beautiful record entitled: Music For Living Inside A Perpetual Marketing Event. If he’s too busy, here are a couple suggestions. When you consider what might be appropriate music for airports or airplanes, you must consider a few factors.
Flying sucks.
Traversing the cattle parade of the airport, from checking in, to schlepping through TSA, to finally sitting in your tiny, miserable seat: all of it is an absolute nightmare. No one has described this form of middle-class torture better than professional rant machine Henry Rollins. In “Airport Hell,” a cut off his 1998 “spoken word” record Think Tank, Rollins goes into gruesomely accurate detail about the avoidable blunders people make while traveling.
“I think it’s the mentality of lines,” barks Rollins. “Standing in lines, peoples’ IQs plummet…No one can figure out how to sit down in 13A. They walk in the aisle, they’re holding their little boarding stub like it’s delicate information and they look hopelessly lost. They look at it, and look up. Look at it, and look up.”
This is of the milder portions of the diatribe, but I’d say it’s worth the 15 minutes of listening to “Airport Hell” in full. While it may only infuriate you further, it will at least bolster your sense of humor and self-importance as you sprint through JFK with one shoe on and the other in your hand, dodging small children and tourists with their cargo ships of luggage on lopsided carts.
2. Increased fear of dying.
I have been flying since before I can remember, and from age 0 to 24, have had no such fear of it. I was so unafraid, that other passengers’ fear was comical to me. At 14 I was at peace with my own mortality and powerlessness. If the plane would tremble, I would liken it to a roller coaster. If it would drop slightly, I would rest assured that my death would matter not in the grand scheme of things, and even if it did, I still couldn’t stop it. Ahhh, the sweet smell of young, nihilistic liberation!
Enter my 25th year, during which I, through no rational explanation, cultivated an intense, out-of-the-blue, bowel-shuddering fear of flying. I know not its point of origin nor its psychological ramifications. I only know it exists. I know this by the sweat on my palms when the plane takes off, by my nervous glances when flight attendants start to hand out anything for free, especially booze. It is a condition I have tried to treat with music (and wine), though my approach has been flawed. I initially thought that dosing myself with “up” songs (and wine) would do the trick. My column from a couple of weeks ago, “Shiny Happy Pop Songs Holding Hands” was written at Chicago O’Hare as an attempt (along with wine) to battle my own aviophobia. It did not work. Perhaps the jubilant tone was my misstep. As I look back to the vintage interview with Eno, I absorb his unique angle on the mood of ideal airport music:
“I was thinking about flying at the time because I thought that everything that was connected with flying was kind of a lie. When you went into an airport or an airplane they always played this very happy music, which sort of is saying, ‘you’re not going to die! There’s not going to be an accident! Don’t worry!’ and I thought that was really the wrong way ‘round. I thought that it would be much better to have music that said, ‘well, if you die, it doesn’t really matter.’ So I wanted to create a different feeling, that you were sort of suspended in the universe and your life or death wasn’t so important.”
Losing Altitude: Songs to Die To. Considering we can’t have free booze or even decent food (let alone free decent food) perhaps the good people of these airlines would allow some sort of in-flight access to any and all of the music you damn pleased. In the case of a loss of cabin pressure: Nils Frahm. Unexpected rough air: Kate Bush. Bird-in-propeller: Richard Hell. At the very least, airports could give spinning Music For Airports a go, because I’d sure as shit rather face my imminent mortality to that than the goddamn Lumineers. After all, Brian Eno made it just for us.
Jazz guitarist, producer, and ambient electronica explorer Dan Gruszka released his enchanting and contemplative solo EP 1121 earlier this month under his creative moniker Daniel Monk. The single “Kite View” quivers with fragility but not weakness. For a debut release, Monk finds a seasoned balance of self-control and self-assurance that is unexpectedly meditative and mature.
“Kite View” features up and coming female artist ISLA whose angel breath cadence swirls within the delicate framework of Monks sensitive production and arrangement. Sans vocals, the track would still sing in a voice tinged with melancholic flight. The addition of ISLA takes “Kite View” into a patient pre-dystopian lullaby. A hint of acoustic guitar rolls in as ISLA’s voice escapes the atmosphere, leaving us abruptly to wade through the stillness left behind by the sensuous synths. In this case, minimalism isn’t boring or safe rather a lesson in space, spacing and the art of dipping your foot into waters before jumping.
“A Call For Distance” is a stand-out track from Glider. It’s a slow-burning song that gradually adds layers of Broderick’s vocals, the plucking of guitar strings and the rattle of a drum. The music rises and settles naturally, like the tide flowing in and out. Broderick’s voice is soft, but compelling as she asks for “A call for distance…to force a change without a name.” Her ability to perfectly layer her vocals shows that though she’s backed many other artists, she really only needs herself.
Glider will be released on July 10th through Western Vinyl. Check out “A Call For Distance” below:
Stage Hands is a Johnstown, PA-based project made up of multimedia artist/producer Brandon Locher and drummer/producer Gerald Mattis. The duo started making music together in 2013, and are releasing their debut LP, Stage Hands, on February 10 through the PA music archive My Idea of Fun.
The self-titled LPis only 26 minutes long. It’s a quick listen, but hard to get out of your head once you’re done. The sound is hard to pin down; it’s busy, but also ambient, soothing, but energetic and danceable. Key tracks are “The Populating of Empty Space,” which builds up slowly into a catchy, funky melody, and the contemplative, keyboard-heavy “Adaptive Lines.”
“It’s snowing styrofoam/ A drone in every home/ For the holidays,” and “Am I just imagining these variant rhythms/ Of antidisestablishmentarianism?”The One and Only Matt Miller sings on the creeping “#unabomber,” the only track with vocals. Other musicians that appear on Stage Hands are Jon Livingston, who played piano on “Stage Hands,” Jon Beard, who contributed drum engineering for “#unabomber,” and Sean Jackson, who played synths on tracks “Adaptive Lines,” “Regardless,” and “#unabomber.”
If you’re wondering how they’ll be able to pull this sound off live, you’ll be able to see for yourself the day before their record drops. Stage Hands will playing at the Brooklyn DIY venue The Silent Barn on February 9, along with Tallesen, Jono Mi Lo, Middle Grey and Dean Cercone. For a preview, check out a video of Stage Hands below:
Expansive rhythms and spiral synths mark Bonobo’s latest single “Flashlight,” part of a three-track EP due for release on Dec. 2 via Ninja Tune. New music from this British producer and musician, also known as Simon Green, comes after nearly two years of touring for his fifth studio album, The North Borders, released in 2013. Before another full album release, Bonobo heads back to North America to tour in several cities including Denver, San Francisco and Vancouver.
Bonobo relies on his dedicated instrumentation, not necessarily lyrics or guest features, to draw in his listeners. And with five studio albums and an enormous wealth of EPs, extra releases and hundreds of venues later, his fans continue to grow.
Bonobo’s brand of electronic music is introspective and entrancing with his use of intricate basslines and a variety of percussion. “Flashlight” stays with that formula; heavy bass anchors listeners and airy synths gradually illuminate a spacious soundscape on which to reflect in and vibe out. Hollow percussion adds a driving factor the track, always surging forward, never left to dwell too long on a single movement. Although it’s not a particularly innovative or exciting track, it highlights what Bonobo does best: ambient electronic music that shows skillful composition and attention to detail. Void of any lyrics with only the occasional whisper of vocal articulation, “Flashlight” invites listeners to shine a light onto themselves, to see what moves them the way the percussion moves the song.
A perfect companion for late night drives and early morning meditation, “Flashlight” showcases the best of Bonobo’s talents and offers listeners a chance to turn down and chill out.
Bonobo North America Tour Dates:
10/20: Vancouver, BC @ Celebrities Nightclub
10/21: Seattle, WA @ Neumos
10/22: Portland, OR @ Branx
10/23: San Francisco, CA @ 1015 Folsom
10/24: San Francisco, CA @ Regency Ballroom
10/25: Los Angeles CA @ KCRW Masquerade Ball (Park Plaza)
10/26: San Diego CA @ House Of Blues
Since its inception in late 2012, the Seattle-based electronic duo ODESZA (Harrison Mills/Catacomb Kid and Clayton Knight/BeachesBeaches) has been both prolific and consistent. In particular, the pair made an unlikely fan out of this usually-EDM-ambivalent listener last November with the soulful and sparkly NO.SLEEP Mix.01, which oozed with personality and R&B inflected melodies. In the two years they’ve been together, Mills and Knight have also put out two full length albums, an EP, and a handful of remixes. They already have a cross-country tour under their belt, and playedSasquatch! Festival last Memorial Day weekend in the luminous company of acts such as Bon Iverand Macklemore & Ryan Lewis.ODESZA’s strength has always been their ability to infuse their songs with soul; amidst the bevy of synths and over-saturated shimmering, the music never pales to clinical.
In Return, the duo’s release, demonstrates a broad range of emotion, from the elated and catchy opener “Always This Late”–which reminds me of pretty much all of NO.SLEEP Mix.01–to tracks like “White Lies,” which draws on syncopated beats and the sharp harmonies of guest vocalist Jenni Potts, to the impressionistic and heat-sleepy “Sun Models.”
I appreciate the variation, though my favorites from this collection still exemplify the sweet soulfulness that endeared me to ODESZA in the first place. The record is front-loaded, with its catchiest, and ultimately most memorable songs listed as tracks one, two, and three– “Always This Late,” “Say My Name,” and Bloom.” However, on the group’s previous releases, there was a case to be made that their albums got boring in the middle. Some of In Return‘s back-half tracks, like “Koto,” show off new textures that liven up the repertoire and keep the music interesting, if sort of identity-less.
Having mastered lovable vocal riffs and bubbly musical landscapes,ODESZA turns, on In Return, to experimental new depths. The result drops September 9th on Counter Records, and you can go hereto order the gorgeous vinyl pressing, or stream via SoundCloud below:
After a slew of collaborations (Bear In Heaven, Devendra Banhart, Julianna Barwick, and others), Roberto Carlos Lange retreated inward to make Double Youth, his fourth full-length release as Helado Negro. Recorded largely in Lange’s home studio in Brooklyn, the album is constructed with simple tools: easy, percussive beats and lullaby-like vocals that swing between Spanish and English. The whole thing falls somewhere between abstract and danceable.
Double Youth‘s guiding theme–and its cover art–comes from an old poster from Lange’s childhood, which he had forgotten about until he pulled it out of the back of his closet one day, in the early stages of recording the album. The image of the two boys posing together, looking both twin-like and not, resonated with Lange. Twosomes crop up everywhere in the making and music of this album: the poster reminded Lange of the warmth of a familiar memory, but also of how far away from that memory he had come; his vocals overlap Spanish with English; the beats recall block party bass lines booming from car speakers, but they easily turn tranquil, with a delicate motif of watery arpeggios that cycles forlornly through this collection. Its components laid bare, Double Youth feels like a conversation, and a kind of imperfect twinship, between voice and computer.
The album’s front half floats by like a pink cloud: the bouncy single “I Krill You” and subsequent track “It’s Our Game” are the two catchiest songs on the collection, and Lange’s lullaby voice is like melted chocolate drizzled over the beat. But over the course of Double Youth, the music develops a huge amount of texture. By the time we get to “That Shit Makes Me Sad,” the cyclical and moody closer, melodies have grown into landscapes, and the early tracks’ sweetness subsides into a strangeness that’s still vaguely benevolent.
On September 2nd, Double Youth will waft gently down to earth, courtesy of Asthmatic Kitty Records. If you simply cannot wait that long to be soothed by smooth vocals and delighted by playful beats, you can stream the whole enchilada over at Pitchfork, in anticipation of the album’s release. Check out “I Krill You” to get a taste:
Julianna Barwick, avant-garde looping genius, loves to perform at unique venues like churches and museums. Recently, she brought her celestial vocals to Dogfish Head Craft Brewery and left such an impression that they have collaborated on a project together. Dogfish Head is releasing a special brew IPA (with a touch of red rice and wasabi) titled Rosabi, after her new album. The sounds of the brewing process were recorded and sampled on some of the tracks on this EP. Dead Oceans will release Rosabi in a limited edition of 1,000, and the records will only be sold in cases of Barwick’s signature beer. But you can hear the first track, “Meet You At Midnight,” right now to get a taste of the album.
“Meet You At Midnight” is a wonder of a ambient track. It’s fragile and gospel-like, the way one might assume, but its setting remains transient, beyond physical, visual, or auditory. Barwick reaches toward something sensational with this track, evoking a kind of pure, unfiltered feeling. The swirling atmospherics are probably not unlike the feeling you’d get from drinking a case of IPA with 8% ABV, but whether or not you’re under the influence, this is the right kind of music to listen to in your bedroom with the lights out and candles flickering. It’s an exciting opportunity that Dogfish and like-minded craft breweries will hopefully extend to other artists. There’s not enough mixed media involving the culinary arts, especially in the music world, and crafting a brew isn’t so unlike crafting a composition after all.
Barwick’s new album/beer combo won’t be available until June 3rd, but you can listen to “Meet You at Midnight” right now with a cold one in hand:
Helsinki-based Jaakko Eino Kalevi flaunts a sound as exotic as his name. Recently scooped up by Weird World, Kalevi has released his four-song EP entitled Dreamzone Remixes, much to the delight of myself and a supposed many others. The EP is split unequally when it comes to sonic consistency, the first quarter sounding nothing like the subsequent three, but this is an observation, not a criticism.
“Memories,” the EP’s introductory track, had me thinking Kalevi’s niche was electronic iterations of world music. The song opens with a throbbing tuba-esque melody that I would expect to find in the crevices of Tom Waits’ 1985 album Rain Dogs. In flood the whimpering tones of the keyboard, most likely on the organ setting, and gentle vocal harmonies reminiscent of Brazilian Tropicalia pioneers Os Mutantes. “Memories” eventually surrenders its lively horn to ticking drums, maracas, and receding voices. There is an element of folk music to “Memories” absent on the remainder of the release.
Despite the worldly references in “Memories,” the songs following suggest that Kalevi found nourishment in the film scores of the mid 80s. Each song is familiar to the point of becoming wordlessly narrative; each song summons vivid cinematic imagery. Track two, aptly titled “No End (Tom Noble’s Never-Ending Story Remix) ” introduces the evocative nature of the final three quarters of the EP.
Its soft, papery drums and faraway female vocals remind me of an ambient Flashdance…maybe the romantic rehearsal scene of some mid 80s dance dramedy. The steady snapping of disco, the eeriness of corporate muzak, and the grainy filter of dream pop all play a part in this track. I was pleased to hear a nod to French House as well, one that particularly brought to mind “Something About Us” by Daft Punk. This is without a doubt my favorite eight minutes of the EP, and a perfect song to end the night, a little drunk, dancing slack-limbed in a bath of blue light.
Track three, “ When You Walk Through Them All “ is no escape from the 80s, or my film references. Initially I’m hearing a somber Hall and Oates; the hooks are infectious, the vocals languid. The song omits a thumping walking pace of cosmopolitan, night time scenes-only after this impression did the title of the song register. Despite the vocals, the song’s bubbling keyboard effects bring back the scores of early video games as well as Tangerine Dream’s compositions for Risky Business.
Dreamzone Remixes concludes with No End (Vezurro Remix). This version of the song is punchier, and more synthetic sounding. The drums are more aggressively electronic, and the synths are at their sharpest. Since I’d assigned a movie scene to the preceding songs, my mind couldn’t help itself. This one would better suit a sex scene, maybe of the science-fiction genre, something along the lines of Tron getting down with Kate Bush. Need I say more?
I’d be willing to bet that the images conjured by this EP were perhaps only a reflection of my strange brain-scape, but the quality of this EP is less of a betting matter; it’s just really, really good.
Check out the video for Jaakko Eino Kalevi’s “No End” below, and make sure to catch Dreamzone Remixesfor some innovative versions of the track.
Sondre Lerche‘s shadowy soundtrack to the Sundance contender The Sleepwalker opens with a love ballad turned inside out: “You Sure Look Swell”, is a familiar melody of lullaby arpeggios, touched with a creepy distortion that becomes more prevalent as the album progresses. Picture an empty gas station with flickering lights, at a nowhere intersection in the middle of the night, with an old radio behind the counter playing Skeeter Davis, the song slowly being overtaken by radio static. That’s the effect.
The track—one of a minority of vocals-heavy songs on the record—ends with a total disintegration into the white noise that has been threatening it from the very first chord, the initially sweet lyrics melting into something sinister. The vocal lines recall the balladry of sixties country pop, and their incongruency with the surrounding music defamiliarizes their warmth. The contrast is further accentuated, in the three subsequent vocal tracks on the record, by silvery female vocals. Ably handled by Marit Larson, Nathalie Nordnes and Sylvia Lewis, the mournful prettiness of the singing offers relief against the instrumental tracks, where the album is at its bleakest.
Spooky ambience and chaotic classical influences mark a sharp departure for the Norwegian musician and composer, whose discography since his debut in 2000 has circled around friendly indie rock melodies flecked with jazz, lounge and eighties pop influences. Sleepwalker is his second soundtrack (in 2007, Lerche recorded a pop collection for Dan In Real Life that bore his musical signature so strongly it could easily have been released as a standalone album). This was a credit to Lerche: his music framed the film without deferring to it, and although the album shifted gracefully into the role of chronicling for a visual storyline, the album was still essentially a collection of songs.
Not so in Sleepwalker. Lerche wrote the music for the soundtrack with Kato Ådland, an actor and composer who had an acting role in Dan In Real Life. The result—Lerche’s first collaboration—is a far-reaching, textured soundscape with elements of spiny, jumbled classical and jazz. Particularly on the less linear second half of the album, the songs don’t feel so much like songs as they feel like one large, shapeshifting piece of music. The guitar arpeggios that predominate in the first track fade in and out of the less melody-driven back half of Sleepwalker, but feel farther away, as if they’re emerging out of a thick fog or through a dream. A common beat—a foreboding, clock-like rhythm shared by strings, electronics, and percussive instruments—recurs as the tracks wear on.
The Sleepwalker soundtrack may come as a surprise from Lerche, but it’s perfectly in line with the aesthetic of the film, which tells the story of Christine, who makes an unexpected appearance at the estate where she grew up as her sister Kaia is in the midst of renovating the property with her partner Andrew. It soon becomes clear that Christine’s grip on reality is growing progressively looser, and the unraveling of family grudges and relationships that ensues is heightened by the uncanny element of Christine’s sleepwalking. Themes of night and obscurity loom large, both visually and in this soundtrack. Moments of ambience serve as blank spots, unrevealed secrets.
And Lerche more than does justice to the creepiness of the mysterious stranger trope on this album. Flanked by warmth—pretty songs, lines of gentle pop harmony—Lerche bottoms out the murky depths of the story, and ends on the ambiguously resolved “Take Everything Back,” a gorgeously harmonized duet between Larsen and Lewis. In the song’s chorus, the bass line descends into a surprising minor modulation, diverging subtly from the predominant thread of the music. At its end, the album’s resolution is ambiguous, retaining a lot of the mystery that it started with.
“Not bringing what I’ve learned through this process into my future songwriting and albums would be impossible,” Lerche has said of creating the Sleepwalker soundtrack. “It’s been so fucking liberating, I can’t turn around now.” Many of the new directions the music takes in this album do, indeed, feel like revelations, most visibly in the way Lerche plays with time, ambience and rhythm on the soundtrack. Will this mean a permanent shift in Lerche’s work? We’ll have to wait and see. For now, enjoy the Sleepwalker soundtrack, which comes out next Tuesday, January 14th via Mona Records.
Listen to “Palindromes,” off The Sleepwalker Original Soundtrack, and watch the trailer for The Sleepwalker below!
Ticket Giveaways
Each week Audiofemme gives away a set of tickets to our featured shows in NYC! Scroll down to enter for the following shindigs.
