This succinct observation offers a glimpse into a language in which Mayer seems uniquely at ease. Through gathering otherworldly effects and artifacts that might otherwise be dismissed as errors, Matters animates unfamiliar forms and hidden possibilities.
A disorienting sense of depth and movement
The liner notes explain that “this album contains a Binaural version specially made to be listened to with headphones. In the Binaural coding system, sound is conditioned so that through headphones a 3D perception of music is generated.” From the opening moments of “Matters 01,” it becomes immediately clear that Daniel Mayer embraces an intensely abstract, noise-driven method of sonic construction. Explosive yet restrained, scraping details spill from headphones and speakers alike, creating a disorienting sense of depth and movement that is difficult to pin down.
Across pieces titled simply “Matters” 1 through 10, non-musical forms gradually emerge, suggesting a sequence united less by melody than by fragments of sonic wreckage. Each composition draws from vast reserves of static, abrasive frequencies, and distorted non-rhythms, maintaining a shared vocabulary while pursuing its own trajectory. “Matters 3” sinks into industrial capsules of sound and rust-coated bleeps, unfolding with an arcane logic that grows increasingly corroded as it progresses.
Elsewhere, “Matters 8” resembles a colossal spacecraft on the verge of collapse. Charged particles disperse midway through, giving way to a seamless, hypnotic synthesizer thread that drifts through space as Mayer reduces sound to its smallest elemental fragments. By “Matters 10,” a refracted C-3PO-like exchange surfaces briefly before dramatic pulses and scattered transmissions splinter into countless shards. Here, Mayer appears to embody his own assertion that “Music can grasp things we couldn’t grasp in words. Code can grasp music we couldn’t grasp otherwise.”
This succinct observation offers a glimpse into a language in which Mayer seems uniquely at ease. Through gathering otherworldly effects and artifacts that might otherwise be dismissed as errors, Matters animates unfamiliar forms and hidden possibilities. As one accompanying statement notes, “Every musical work traces developments: of the cultural environment in which it emerges, of its creator(s), and not least of itself, as—distinct from other artifacts—it unfolds in time.”
_Matters_ Traces of Codes from Afar is available on Cero.
