DEAF CENTER – REVERIE
Deaf Center is not exactly flooding the market with their releases: their last album, Low Distance, was released in 2019 – before that, Recount was released in 2014. Like Recount, Reverie presents two long tracks both around 17 minutes (so the perfect length for the (red) vinyl edition, leaving enough room for the dynamics).
It will not be immediately clear on first listen, but Reverie (split into Rev and Erie) is a live recording from October 2024, performed for Sonic Pieces’ 15th anniversary celebration.
Skodvin and Otto Totland had not performed together since 2019, but their musical interaction in this spontaneous improvisation (!) feels like returning home after a long absence.
Reverie obviously means ‘daydream’, but – especially on Rev – this daydream gets quite intense. The piece starts with Totland‘s distinctly melancholic piano melodies – the kind you would expect in a piece called Reverie. Slowly yet inevitably, Skodvin‘s electronic processing creeps in, accompanied by his heavily processed guitar and cello. Even under the pressure of an intense climax, Totland‘s peaceful piano playing bravely holds up.
Erie begins as a duo between piano and cello, slowly working towards the end where “the piano motifs from before repeat and vary, for then to slowly settle into gentle melancholy, supported only by a low, rumbling ambient shadow”.
“Totland’s deep melodic feeling is underscored by Skodvin’s abstract ambience and processing. Dark versus light, loud versus quiet – this has always been at the core of what makes Deaf Center a special project”.
Reverie is released on Sonic Pieces on a limited red vinyl edition and as a download. (There’s no CD version).
ABUL MOGARD – QUIET PIECES
Quiet Pieces is the promising title of Abul Mogard (Guido Zen)‘s new album, and the first release on his own personal label imprint called Soft Echoes.
His widescreen immersive music is instantly recognisable, yet the composition process was different than before. It started with archived material from earlier projects, which were combined with fragments from a collection of 78 rpm classical and opera records from his late uncle. The latter are not recognisable as such, since the samples were heavily processed. Also, the processed fragments became a source of inspiration for the new compositions.
Although all of this music is new, it may also wake up some almost forgotten memories: a different version of In A Studded Procession, for example, was featured on 2013’s Sequence 7 compilation – but the additional Serge modular synthesiser was recorded after that (in 2015).
“Voluminous waves of quiet and loud undulate between consonance and dissonance, conjuring imagery of a decaying grandeur that humanity’s decadence has surrendered to the elements.”
Mogard‘s music always feels to me like a storm slowly building up around me, starting slow, quiet, and intimate, but slowly increasing the intensity without ever losing its intimacy. It works wonders on many different levels and volumes.
The physical edition of Quiet Pieces is pressed on biovinyl. Its official release date is May 30, but it’s already sold out on Bandcamp. The Bandcamp page mentions a few online resources where it is still available – but don’t hesitate too long! Of course, there’s also a download version available.
LOSCIL – LAKE FIRE
When Scott (Loscil) Morgan made a road trip into the mountains (“marking a personal half-century milestone”) he was surrounded by “the ominous proximity of wildfires and dense smoke”, thus “celebrating life while the world burns”.
It usually does not take much time after a forest fire before the first signs of new life become visible, the new shoots of trees and plants breaking through the ashes.
The music on this new album came to life in a somewhat similar process: a lot of compositions for a different project were initially discarded (apart from Ash Clouds), and what remained was completely reshaped and remixed. Lake Fire became “an album burnt to the ground only to be reassembled out of its cinders. Fragments of the original lurk beneath a densely overpainted canvas of sound.”
Forest fires are often named after a nearby regional lake. This may sound strange, but there’s a simple reason for that: naming conventions prioritize the use of the nearest prominent geographic feature to the fire’s point of origin, which often happens to be a lake.
The grey cover photo was taken from a rowboat, the mountainside obfuscated by smoke from a nearby lake fire. So there’s the album title..
In line with its underlying theme and composition process, the music on this album feels somewhat more ominous than most of Scott Morgan’s earlier works. The “ash-laden sonics” definitely “mine the tension within the cycle of destruction and rejuvenation”. Its subtleties require dedicated listening and a solid sound system.
Lake Fire is released by Kranky, and available on CD, as a 2LP vinyl album, and as a digital download.
Thank you so much for the kind words