zakè, Ossa, ASC :: Microliths and Momentary Drifts (Zakè Drone)

Overall, Monoliths and Momentary Drifts stands as more than mere sequel to Syntheticopia, in line with ELM pioneers’ future basing, redolent not so much of machines of loving grace as of a sort of more beautiful human life, albeit ever anchored to earthly reality.

A complete story that developed naturally

 

Dalliance of Past Inside the Present capo Zach Frizzell (zakè) with Kaiton Slusher (Ossa) is renewed, augmented here by ambient techno/d’n’b maven James Clements (ASC). Each has previous, solo and in collab, for PITP / Zakè Drone, with first full-length in this formation, Microliths and Momentary Drifts, having as figure Ossa’s aerial motifs, field zakè’s compositional core, and ground* ASC’s low-end rumble.
(*figure-ground-field model used more as metaphor than actual design paradigm)

‘This collaboration tells a complete story that developed naturally as we bounced ideas between one another,’ notes Slusher, feeling ‘we shared a genuine connection in what we were aiming to achieve,’ and while each artist’s voice—Ossa’s warped melodicism, zakè’s tape tweaks and classical cadence, ASC’s bass weight and hyperreal sheen—resounds, somehow whole conspires to transcend sum of parts. Rolling analog synth, off-world ambience and bass thrum collude in a kind of re-contextualization of peak ’90s ambient stylings. Melodic tone sketches (Microliths) alternate with longer slow-build passages (Momentary Drifts) in an arrangement that becomes an affordance* for single-sitting focused listening in line with 90s ambient classics (cf. SAWII, 76:14), sound located liminally between spectral revenants of the past and the telescope gaze of future days, an ambivalent prognosis born of machine dreams attendant.
(*for affordance see Affordances and the musically extended mind – PMC)

“Microlith 1” sets the tone with a cascade of keys shimmering over sound field as if in miniature display of the three amigos’ evocative potency. “Momentary Drift 1” has kinetic melodies overlap and thick reverb mist creep over the backdrop with ASC’s bass-tone sub-weight below ground. The first section seems split between sense of place and a kind of non-place: desolate transmissions over light years (“Microlith 2”), harmonized vapors echoing through liminal space (“Momentary Drift 3”), luminescence occluded through tape saturated mist (“Momentary Drift 5”). A solemn choral invokes eschatological visions, low-light loops left to breathe and brim over in “Momentary Drift 6,” edges vanishing into dusk. “Momentary Drift 7” is enhanced by Chad Mossholder (Twine) with signature guitar treatments—processed static bursts lending gritty atmospheric contrast as ending nears. “Microlith 8” closes, brief sunlight fading to muted crackle in a suitably ambivalent denouement.

Overall, Monoliths and Momentary Drifts stands as more than mere sequel to Syntheticopia, in line with ELM pioneers’ future basing, redolent not so much of machines of loving grace as of a sort of more beautiful human life, albeit ever anchored to earthly reality.

Microliths and Momentary Drifts is available on Zakè Drone. [Bandcamp]