ASC :: Original Soundtrack (A Strangely Isolated Place)

While much piano-based music can tend towards the precious, laying over the listener an insipid blanket of saccharine sadness, or blithe brightness, ASC’s OST strikes a nicely poised ambiguity over its course—a somewhat neutral tenor with hints of nostalgia here, uplift there.

Placing piano front and center

James Clements returns to his main project, ASC, following two albums as Comit for A Strangely Isolated Place, with a release in a different mode purporting to create space for listeners to construct their own associations with an imaginary Original Soundtrack.

Clements bestrides a huge two decade-plus back catalog like a colossus evincing mastery of a range of electronic genres and stylings, from ambient through techno to IDM and (post-)DnB. Conspicuous by its absence, though, is a single instrument-focused work—till now, that is, with the lacuna filled by Original Soundtrack, placing piano front and center of its eight reflective pieces. Delicate looped piano motifs with apertures for soft synths to spirit through, string-y pads imbuing all with a fine sense of tim[br]e and space, letting listeners loose as directors of their own head cinema to which this OST stands as score. While much piano-based music can tend towards the precious, laying over the listener an insipid blanket of saccharine sadness, or blithe brightness, ASC’s OST strikes a nicely poised ambiguity over its course—a somewhat neutral tenor with hints of nostalgia here, uplift there.

Deep space has inspired much of Clements’ work, with The Farthest Reaches and Trans— Neptunian Objects being typical titular indicators. Here, though he eschews the more obviously cosmic, paring back his palette to piano with textural treatments, the concern with space remains, albeit differently configured—as much, if not more, inner as outer, as much psychological as acoustic, its echoing delight more reflective, more Budd than dBridge. For them that know, it’s Rafael Anton Irisarri mastering. Masters at work.

Original Soundtrack is available on A Strangely Isolated Place [Bandcamp]