Inquiri x bvdub :: A Life In Setting Suns (Past Inside The Present)

The album title of this duet of paired longform tracks from Inquiri and bvdub is perfect for the Past Inside the Present label. What is our past, but a life in setting suns? And what is our present but the hope for more sunsets and sunrises.

What is our past, but a life in setting suns?

The album title of this duet of paired longform tracks from Inquiri and bvdub is perfect for the Past Inside the Present label. What is our past, but a life in setting suns? And what is our present but the hope for more sunsets and sunrises. I’m not ashamed to say that one of the things I love about Past Inside the Present is the fact that they are based in Indianapolis. Who would have thought a globe spanning label could be sequestered in the middle of the Hoosier state? As a fellow Midwesterner, I’m not at all surprised. The heartland is full of creative musical ecologies.

Lacey IQ is a native of Texas, now based in LA, and a prolific DJ and producer. Inquiri is her eclectic electronica project and she previously pared up with bvdub on another PITP release, Destroyesterday. They had some new ideas that sparked from those sessions and decided to follow them into tomorrow. There previous collaboration was about a yesterday we can no longer touch, the day of the past that remains with us in the history of our memory, which they sought out to destroy and erase. Now they have put the focus on the setting suns of our future. Good thing the Inquiri track, “In Another Life” is a nod to the recurrent idea of reincarnation. The sunset of one life blurs into the dawn of another. At least that’s the way I take it.

The chopped and screwed rhythms of dissected vocals singing something about time get broken and destroyed into breaks and odd time signatures melded to a hard-hitting techno thump on her 18 minute side. These vocal textures are like a thread between incarnations, a link to something that can’t be easily remembered, but sometimes awakens spontaneously in the soul who realizes they have been here before. Lush sweeps of raining synthesizers wash the entirety of the track, with its throbbing bass heartbeat in waves of emotion. The voice also sings “I’ll be waiting” to meet again in another life. In my dreams, so beautiful.

Unleash it again into the artisanal electronica ::

Machines might not be emotional. They seem to be just knobs, circuitry, often paired with software and screens. The human behind the controls is the one who infuses the music with meaning, depth, and resonance. Otherwise the sound that comes out is just the sound of a preset, the preconfigured message of the medium. Inquiri seems to have absorbed into her solar plexus all the memories and emotion of the people she affected on the dance floor at all the nights she DJ’d. Now she can unleash it again into the artisanal electronica she crafts. The human is the craftsmen. The machine is just a tool, an music is for people, even when made with machine. This is electricity infused with life to get people moving, in touch with the heaven of their bodies.  

All this paves the way for bvdub’s flip side with “Sunrise, Sunset.” Like pairing a good wine, pairing two artists together isn’t always just a slapdash affair. I mean, it could be, but it’s nice when the sound worlds flow together and coalesce. Brock van Wey had a similar history as Lacey with his time spent behind the decks of San Francisco’s rave scene in the 90s. But our days and nights have a way of catching up with us, and bvdub decided he needed a change in scenery, a change in culture, and thus began his next day, the next time period of his life in China. The sunset comes on all of us, on all of our different times and phases of life, and after a few years away he started making music again.

On this latest track the vocals are again what send me into a state ekstasis, of rapture. The voices seem outside of themselves in some way, disembodied. Perhaps that is because their origin, at least to me, is so mysterious. The lyrics here are a plaintive cry, of someone calling for a lover to come over after the after party, after the long night. They seem estranged. Perhaps their has been a fight and now one of them wants to make things up, to work things out, to fix their problems. To do it together. The textures, the beats, the ebb and flow of this or that element, all work together in harmony over the nineteen minute’s I am once again immersed in bvdub’s singular musical world, a place I look forward to returning to once another day opens up its doors before me.

Two tracks, two artists, about forty minutes of music. It’s the perfect way to end another day here on earth.

A Life In Setting Suns really is:

“A story of two lives.
Of two dreams still unextinguished.
Of a time in dreams of another life.
A life in setting suns.”

A Life In Setting Suns is available on Past Inside The Present. [Bandcamp | PITP Vinyl]