Nows
Ravello, 2022
8/10
A record pieced together during the pandemic that involved bouncing musical ideas back and forth, the ‘sound correspondences’ between Sarah Belle Reid and David Rosenboom entails strings, horns, modular synthesizers and analog signal processors, plus many more.
“Never Know Night Ears” opens the listen with a primal, raw energy that’s full of swift electronic manipulation amid wordless vocals in the otherworldly climate, and “Accelerated Mitosis” follows with a mysterious droning that comes with videogame-esque noises and an ominous backdrop in a sci-fi sort of way.
Halfway through, “Pluck Ping Scatter” recruits all sorts of percussive noises that could be found objects, and the synthetic blips and bleeps are quite fascinating, too, while “Softspace” flows with plenty of ambient qualities that are certainly cinematic, sometimes even dreamy.
Landing near the end, “Time-Sound Canvas Fire Brush” resembles water flowing in another dimension and is particularly iconoclastic, and “Tolling” exits with a slithering, buzzing playfulness that incorporates the sound of bells.
A post-genre excursion that can be abrasive and perplexing but is always exciting, Reid and Rosenboom make for an unconventional and highly unusual listen that you can’t help but be drawn to.
Travels well with: Globe Travel Homeland; DRAX- CHAOS + Contemplation