zakè & City of Dawn :: Ash (Azure Vista)

Like an extended gaze on the infinite, or the sound of chronostasis, Ash is motion felt at a Brownian micro-level of timbre and harmonic shift.

A temporo-spatial kaleidoscope of celestial bodies

It’s tempting to see zakè & City of Dawn’s latest joint venture, Ash, as reflective of their native Texas and Indiana; all ambient expanse, tonal layers in slow-mo ascent like sun over horizons (Texas?), drones sussurating like leaves in endless woods (Indiana?). A review shoe-in, albeit a conceit, it makes for a nice opening gambit to introduce Zach Frizzell and Damien Duque, first heard as Dawn Chorus and the Infallible Sea (with Marc Ertel) on Liberamente (2020), becoming zakè & City Of Dawn for Wander, with other collusions since—e.g. Frizzell & Duque, with added Ossa, for syntheticopia, then a duo again for Agape (2021), to which Ash, co-hosted by Jonas Munk’s Azure Vista (PITP co-distributing for the US) is effectively the follow-up.

Opener “Quiet Spirit” manages to contain within it all the pair have cared to share over the span of their communion, synthetic and organic boundaries dissolving to forge an affordance structure for meditative or distracted minds. The title track spreads sky-wide with layers of tonefloat and background static manipulated into a stately sound world. This and the luminescent “Lo” are short-form vignettes adumbrated by longer-form tracts: “Invocation” projects a temporo-spatial kaleidoscope of celestial bodies, “They Know Not” ushers in micro-orchestral dusk, static crackles beneath, a galaxy seemingly dripping from a needle, textures artfully picked out by James Bernard‘s mastering mastery.

Like an extended gaze on the infinite, or the sound of chronostasis, Ash is motion felt at a Brownian micro-level of timbre and harmonic shift. Euphonic, engaging in its ‘complex simplicity,’ tailor-made to quietly thrill excitable ambience-sprawlers prone (in both senses) to paralysis by, say, and SotL, however remote, of early space (music) pioneers (e.g. Messrs Roach or Rich).

Ash is available on Azure Vista [Bandcamp]