Atmospheric sustained chordal drones with changing textures and tempos. The proportions create illusions, flying at a great altitude might appear to be slow from a distance, but the intervals traveled are astounding, and the one who is flying is probably catching the greatest sense of motion, as perceived only by the constant listener.
A slow hiss of pastoral throbbing and a flickering of sparse tones
Atmospheric sustained chordal drones with changing textures and tempos. The proportions create illusions, flying at a great altitude might appear to be slow from a distance, but the intervals traveled are astounding, and the one who is flying is probably catching the greatest sense of motion, as perceived only by the constant listener. I will tell you whenever I have questions.
Feeling Flying is released on CD and limited to 50 copies, they each feature vintage linen book covers and each issue is individually constructed with hand-cut collages and mixed-media artworks, and each copy is hand-numbered and packed inside glassine bags.
The story here is that this Feeling Flying collaboration started when Andrew Thomas sent midi files with sketches of ambient tracks to Bevan Smith, many of which were skeletal and improvised on an electric piano. While others might build up and layer these minimal tracks, Bevan did the opposite. He slowed them down to glacial tempo and removed half the notes from Andrew’s original compositions. These midi tracks were run to an old synthesizer, its output was so noisy the artifact became an element of its own. Because the songs were so slow, Bevan could mix them entirely by the time the audio was recorded.
The perceptual launch brings a slow hiss of pastoral throbbing and a flickering of sparse tones, “Shimmer 5A” (7:24). As the track progresses, sometimes there are harmonics created by overlapping or the effects of shifting the changing notes. The hissing is an ongoing perpetual glitch. Things are falling out of the sky, but are they falling if there is no impact? They just keep going. Things are moving laterally and vertically to infinity. There are sweeping sensations, towards the end of the first track the hiss reduces and the tones almost become clarified.
The second track uses the same general vocabulary but there are chords instead of floating tones, “Shimmer 7” (4:28) broadens things out, adagio presto with points and chords. There is a spooky martian graveyard that opens up, “Shimmer 1” (11:18) has bending throbbing balls of light that drift back into a slower version of this new territory until it pops into a shimmering piano lagoon of lingering suspended chromatic tonality. There are several pauses that reset the trajectory in a subtle way, how is the listener to know if the pause is not the end of track? Trust. This probably is, but somehow does not sound like, the same keyboard and use of sparse chords and tones, by the end of the track things have changed. This track has lots of room and uses its time wisely. The overlapping harmonics pile up. “Shimmer 9” (2:35) brings similar flickering clouds hissing with glitchy melodic tendencies, is that the distant hiss of falling water? I am not sure. I am not sure of anything anymore.
The buzz has an edge in some high places ::
Now we come to the shortest track, “Shimmer 12A Piano Version” (1:05) and I am thinking of thumps caused by the pedals and streaming darkly on the bare sustained chord drones. Is this new territory? It seems wider and broader and stronger. “Shimmer 4” (7:24) resumes the sensation of flight, where the hissing is from altitude and not water. Am I wrong about that? The hissing could be the sound of air in tumbling infested night flights too. The tones curl and bleed, like the naked man in the cathedral. Is that old ghost real?
How do you measure the calls of lost ships that are not in a harbor? “Shimmer 9G” (5:50) turns the same context into a new dilemma, I can just watch. This is probably a piano with extra fuzz. The thumps caused by the pedal are even more distinct here. Some thumps are louder. The loudest notes are the ones that glitch best. The melody never quite resolves, but then, it probably does not need to. The buzz has an edge in some high places, not in others. Try again. “Shimmer 12A” (3:32) takes a new tact, sustained drone tones that cautiously expand, when no one is looking. This is my favorite track. What stands out to me is the density of activity. Maybe my ears are changing, having listened to all the other tracks on the way here. Something lightly different is “Shimmer 2 1” (9:39), but now my question is about the space between the 2 and the 1, is this a typo? It does not have to be. What if it is? How do you say it? Now we come to “Shimmer 9 Piano” (3:06) where the reverberation just hangs on. We have consistently spoken the same sonic language everywhere as these compositions have unfolded. This closing track probably has more ghosts. I like ghosts.
Andrew Thomas has released music on Kompakt and !K7, is featured on many Pop Ambient compilations, and was curator of Air Texture I. He has also been nominated for Best Chill Out Artist in the Beatport Music Awards.
Bevan Smith has released albums on Carpark Records as Signer and “Building Memories Without You” was featured as one of Fact Magazine’s 25 best dub techno tracks of all time.
Feeling Flying is available on Handstitched*. [Bandcamp]
