Days shifts from light and floaty to more earthy and rumbling, its seven pieces ranging from pop-ambient lushness to wispy Basinski, the lingering residue of its sources’ timbres seemingly sieved from recorded air.
Line is an enterprise whose name is associated above all with challenging listeners. Recent difficult customers NHK (Program) and Koenraad Ecker (Sleepwalkers in a Cold Circus) bear testament to this. Less evident, though, is the amenability of this peddler of bespoke post-digital product to the pleasures of the flesh of a well-tempered timbre—an attribute gratifyingly present in the winning ways of Days. Italian ambient drone trio, Triac—ex-Tu M’ man, Rossano Polidoro, with Marco Seracini and Augusto Tatone (cf. last year’s In A Room (Laminal))—purveys a highly processed refined strain of digital ambient: diaphanous drones in thin harmonics by any other name. Naturally, Line (Mr Chartier, I presume) is not so reductive of the three amici‘s art. Poetics primed to woo your igloo reviewer, the blurb speaks in sound art tongues of ‘exploring relations between sound space atmosphere and natural elements.‘
The efficacy of Triac’s poetry, though, is largely down to prowess in populating a maximally immersive sound space with minimal elements—primary forms, shadows and light, in constant mutation. Recent work by ex-Tu M’ chum, Emiliano Romanelli, was described as ‘a kind of glassine dream mesmerism […], [Romanelli] holds back on sending in the ambient clouds in favor of a more thinly diffused vaporousness, sustaining a more lowercase minimalism of means redolent of earlier Tu M’ work (cf. Monochromes Vol. 1).’ (333 Loops (Volume I)). And, though Triac’s identity comes through internal nuance, much the same applies here. These Days are recursive, not repetitious, pieces, its phantom chamber loops in microsound motion—here radiant, pure and clean, there foggy, grainy and rumbling. Nacreous soft synth clouds curl as various vapors diffuse multi-hued across the sound field. “Day One” dawns shimmering bright, serene and blithe, increasingly draped in a mist of intersecting strata. “Day Two” is bleaker, with glacial micro-melodies in remotion. The soundfield lightens for “Day Three” and “Day Four,” glistening with soft tintinnabulations, before turning to dusk on “Day Five,” a more enigmatic high-end keynote colored with deeper rumblings. “Day Six” is the hottest spot, low-end surge mixing with string-like drones of a murkier, more ominous, mien. On the closure of “Day Seven,” the rumble is differently turned—gliding melodies bespeaking sadness and solemnity more than omen and portent.
Overall, Days shifts from light and floaty to more earthy and rumbling, its seven pieces ranging from pop-ambient lushness to wispy Basinski, the lingering residue of its sources’ timbres seemingly sieved from recorded air. It’s otiose to ponder whether Days is an allusion to periodicity, seven here contained constituting a week in unsung song form, or a pun invoking the heady effect intended by its suite of remote slow-mo tonefloat. Pure, unalloyed, temporo-spatially unmoored.
Days is available on Line. CD | Digital
https://vimeo.com/120247195
