Elori Saxl’s Drifts And Surfaces opens with a stark electronic pulse, setting the tone for an album that reshapes her experiences on Lake Superior into three distinct, commissioned works. Expansive yet intimate, it explores the lake’s haunting duality and the fluid boundary between individual identity and the artistic communities that carry us.
Lake echoes shape Saxl’s vision
An electronic pulse rings out, the first few seconds of New York-based ambient artist Elori Saxl’s latest album, Drifts And Surfaces, create a vivid impression. Following her 2021 breakthrough album The Blue of Distance, that worked with recordings from Lake Superior, Saxl wanted to consider different ways of interpreting her time living on Madeline Island, which sits on the lake.
Drifts And Surfaces is made up of three distinct pieces, each springing from a different commission: “Drifts I,” “Drifts II,” and “Surfaces.” “Drifts I” was commissioned by Third Coast Percussion of Chicago, “Drifts II” was commissioned by the Brooklyn-based trio Tigue, and “Surfaces” was commissioned by the Guggenheim for a retrospective on the eight-decade career of American painter Alex Katz.
“If you fall into Lake Superior, you risk dying in a matter of minutes. There’s also this sense—once you get outside of the Apostle Islands and you’re in the lake—that you could be swept away into nothingness and nobody would find you,” notes Saxl during a virtual conversation with Tone Madison. Saxl’s upbringing has made her particularly aware of the lake’s lethal duality, which is translated expertly through the bulk of her discography.
Stepping back to view “Surfaces” within the set, Saxl finds the stream that runs throughout, the concept of the self as part of something greater. “Katz‘s depiction of multiple generations of New York City artists inspired me to think about how there is no individual ‘me’ as an artist without both the artists who came before me and the community of artists I’ve grown alongside. The delineation between us blurs, and I feel as though I am carried on an interwoven surface formed by the community around me. At the same time, I know that eventually, I have to turn inwards and swim out alone.”
Drifts And Surfaces is available on Western Vinyl. [Bandcamp]
