Comechelet x ϙue :: TIME (re.core)

Aesthetically, although beatless, this new work TIME is an ambitious break from ambient music’s associations with the wellness industry, or any connection to environmental music, a sound that is Post-Ambient, leaving faded glimpses of stylistic references.

The ever-accelerating speed of comprehension and moments of stillness

The album TIME has a sound palette that explores a tension between stillness and movement, perception of space and time, and of course many emotions and feelings. The constant listener is entering psychoacoustic territory and the evocation of vast emotional separation, distances and a cathartic purgency of an intimate solitude. The ten-track trip into these darkest and most visceral corners of Ukrainian experimentation feels equally suspended between assertive expanses and the melancholy of waiting, as well as the ever-accelerating speed of comprehension and moments of stillness. Within time and distance, the tensions between human beings are in constant flux, like waves on the shore they come and go, again and again.

Passionate about love and architecture, Comechelet integrates her visual imagination, such as shapes, surfaces and their materials, into the cadence of these compositions, thus sublimating a perception of space and its perspective. Aesthetically, although beatless, this new work TIME is an ambitious break from ambient music’s associations with the wellness industry, or any connection to environmental music, a sound that is Post-Ambient, leaving faded glimpses of stylistic references. ϙue’s approach to production in TIME is a continuation of already-existing tropes: the concept of ego death, a sonification of the obvious electricity of everything alive.

3 потаємних джерел життя виникає вічний рух
“From the secret sources of life arise eternal movement.“

Comechelet first approached ϙue with a proposal to make an album after 727 listens of ϙue’s track “U” which was released on February 25th, 2022, the second day of the full-scale invasion by Russia of Ukraine. This collaboration would most likely not have happened if it was not for an acute need for Ukrainians to unite in solidarity in the face of the unprovoked war that Russia has started. When a country is brutally attacked and full extinction of one nation’s culture is the declared intention of the aggressor, the natural response is a conglomeration and preservation of cultural heritage, including the heritage created in the contemporary days.

From inside the shield the constant listener is safe and the feeling seems habitable. The light struggles to pierce the darkness with the extremely low temperatures outside of the shield’s viewing portal. The view could be from underwater or in the arctic extremes or anyplace with freezing rain  because of the blurry image quality. I hear what sounds like pieces of the voice of a Ukrainian woman talking on a telephone amidst bubbly textures and strange electronic sounds, the title track “TIME” (3:00) starts in a world that is shifting and swirling. Are we ‘there’ yet?

Back in the days, two lovers who were living apart had found a way to cope with the distance in their relationship. Every day at the same moment, they would climb to the nearer highest point in their area, and look towards the horizon, as if they could see each other. These episodes are about the feeling of waiting for someone loved, as well as about the distance that separates us from that person, either in wide open atmospheres or in still architectural spaces. In such spaces, we may experience the distressing feeling that time has stopped.

Like electric water in a forest at night ::

Continuing these bubbly textures and electronic sounds, “Flora” (8:00) builds quiet suspense until a rogue synth breaks free and starts getting energized, like electric water in a forest at night, with mumbling whispers of mystery. Perhaps we are using a tiny narrow and focused spotlight to explore the forest floor at midnight. In the next track, “The girl who runs on the waves” (4:00) our electronic insect overlords give directions from a new oceanic cave with swirling colors and flashing sounds which build to a stronger intensity. Buzzing rainbows collide and fracture, now I hear the waves crashing and she is flying just above the crashing surf.

“Realtime” (6:00) crosses a new electronic threshold, we are entering this strange new expanse. I think that somewhere deep in this electronic water the lobsters are talking and the threshold is crumbling. Soon more lobsters arrive and I am swirling spiraling falling holding steady plunging bubbling deeper in the underwater cave. Continuing this theme, “Microclimate” (4:30) takes the strange activity and makes sounds suggesting something more is somewhere in there. This grinding and shifting suggests to me that unknown forces are moving and otherwise working out new placements in the darkness. Here in the cave the lobsters are always talking with their language of clicks, now the sound suggests activity is expanding into the colorful dancing shrimp fleets.

From the secret springs of life arises eternal movement, “З потаємних джерел життя виникає вічний рух” (6:00), our new destiny is coming in from above, getting closer slowly, however the expanse is bigger than I expected. On the surface of the electronic water where we bob about there is uncertain activity. Up there warm ships arrive and glide about. I think I hear deep within a tiny moment a voice from a radio communicator. The warm ships are assembled to work together at something I do not understand. I hear cascading flows and isolated base booms coming from the chrome tunnels. “Rendez-vous” (5:00) starts a new tension tearing and ghosts try to warn us, building into an abrupt ascension into brighter colors, falling back to rise again and again until the final strong ascension.

Something is moving deep down below ::

“To all the mutilated souls (we will sing to them)” (8:00) is a tribute to the catastrophes happening in Ukraine daily. There is a feeling of gentle hope rising and soaring, sometimes I hear the gurgle of fluids under the abattoir while the sky is going lighter and more colors emerge. Still, something is moving deep down below, and now I am pulling something up from down there using a rope. Eventually an angel choir comes and goes and returns until we are rising at last. There are arpeggiating sequencers and more light.

Now the swirling leads to some isolated abrupt sharp wacks, while the lobsters are still talking. I am exploring the “Poetry of Detail” (5:00). Here new chambers open and call out to claim us. My feelings are clearing and rising. I am finding fragments of horns and pounding metal frames that rattle and echo. There are throbbing flashes and straining in the water rushing and the sound of cracking cables.

The closing track, “Never Ever Ever” (5:30) features neofolk vocalist o-a, who, together with ϙue, forms the duo OO0oϙ0O0O00O, hence the track’s attribution to OO0oϙ0O0O00O x Comechelet. Here we come into yet another new chamber which is much more quiet than all the others here, so quiet that I can make out a submarine engine throbbing steadily while ethereal female vocals spread out in the distance. The submarine proceeds steadily forward, then it fades off into the distance. Somehow now we are in a quiet cave, the angels return but they are mostly alone this time, perhaps they are calling for someone amidst textural grinding and the sound of falling electronic water, then TIME ends.

TIME is available on re.core. [Bandcamp]