(07.22.05) Aidan Baker and Matt Borghi are part of the new generation of
low-light ambientists, travelers on the nocturnal fringes who prospect
for sounds in the hinterlands and bring them back to the realms of the
light where they are stretched and skewed and bent beyond recognition.
Baker and Borghi make sinister drones, soundscapes that drift and
haunt. Together, they have produced Undercurrents, a
collaboration for Zenapolae which finds both experimenting, trying new
things in an effort to discover richer terrains than they’ve plumbed
before.
The rich discovery is the piano. Baker and Borghi traditionally start
with the guitar, finding their tones in the long sustain and the tiny
reverberations of feedback from their amps. However,
Undercurrents is filled with piano. Cautious, careful melodies
eke out space within the drifting miasmas of stretched drones, lending
grace and movement to the already fragile soundscapes. There are
distant field recordings of either birds or street noises (they’re
buried enough it is hard to tell) in “Precipitate,” a whistling wind
of sound that runs beneath the glowing tones of transformed guitar
notes and the dripping sound of the piano. The three parts of
“Undercurrent” are all filled with the slow movement of the keys,
melodies that turn and twist unhurriedly while sheets of tones are
spread across a watery landscape.
There are some elements of the collaborations between Robert Fripp and
Brian Eno in Undercurrents, the same cascading sense of
unreality coming from the guitar and the same delicate precision
rising from the piano melodies. This record works well both loud and
soft as if finds spaces to fill with echoes regardless of its presence
in your sonic space. I like the echoes left in my head by
Undercurrents; I like the sense of movement beneath a placid
surface and I like how Baker & Borghi have made a record that shows
off their strengths while venturing into new territories. Aces.
Undercurrents is out now on Zenapolae.
