We wonder what happens next. When the lights go out. Where do we go, what do we feel… and do we?
The Leaf Library had long been on a creative quest to explore this haunting urge to test waters of the unknown. The looping drone pop sextet takes you to that undoubtedly scary, although euphoric state of separation. It is only your stream of consciousness and a definite awareness of it that hold your ground under a spell of this beautiful experiment. The sounds were originally curated as a contributing element of Cities and Memory, a global field recording project intended to provide a listener with a dual experience of sound obtained from each location; the original and the reimagined. It targets a contrast of your fleeting perspective and points to the ambiguity of life we immortalize in our fragile memory.
A three-track album was comprised of the sound waves projected on the grounds of a Venetian island and recorded by Stuart Fowkes; the driving force behind this mind-boggling expedition. The foreign language spoken at the base of a soundscape serves as the subliminal vehicle that holds the key to a fear factor throughout this somewhat daunting experience. You get pushed out of an airplane expected to fly. It is as emotional as it is frightening.
‘Glass Version’ may find you on the verge of tears. It takes you on a beautiful, yet troubling wave of anxiety that threatens peace. A ten-minute track traps you in space between dark of the physical and light of the spiritual. There is uncertainty and grief in having to choose a path that would lead to eternity, the agony and torture of free will. The record is a psychological instrument of efficient minimalism. It is solely dependent on a careful interjection of unfiltered reality into authentic emulation of percussive elements in its effortless layering and masking of drum reverbs that dissolve in immersive power of sustained sound carrying the emotional weight of this hypnotic mix. The blatant exposure of life corrupting the cynicism walking in shadows of dub techno, a fair game. It is a gradual journey of soul travel – a moment of departure from the physical leading to a horror of spiritual entrapment. You can only wish to escape at the mercy of final judgement.
-Alla
