For a proper listen to this record, find a silent space/moment to listen...make sure to eliminate all sources of distraction...and finally make yourself comfortable and enjoy the trip...
Darren McClure's minimal compositions and granular tonalities, have made him one of the most notable artists in the netlabel community: his releases with Testtube, Oblast, 2063 Music and Standard Klik Music are albums that anyone into the "12k and Raster Noton sound" would highly appreciate.
The latest release of Darren McClure is inspired by the autumn in Japan (where he lives with his wife and new born son); autumn is the season where nature prepares himself for the painful and hard winter, a season of deliverance and loss, a transitional empty.
Aki could be Darren's darkest, deepest and more emotional and twisted record to date. 25:07 minutes of heavy mental tripping and tonal drifting, where awareness grows deep and wide, silencing our thoughts and emotions. Darren McClure's work is like a urban sci fiction film, happening nowhere, finding infinite universes in small memories.
The album titled piece, Aki, starts with filed recordings-like sounds, reminiscent of an autumn walk while stepping over the dead leafs, suddenly an intense oscillating sine emerges and fades away. Fading colors, the second piece, is more organic and complex, like granular moans in a noisy wind...beautiful.
Just above is a short piece very strong and dark, like an invisible gigantic round energy source breathing. Cosmos in the lane is the more abstract and psychoactive piece on the record, very enigmatic and scary like a lost spaceship with a dead crew traveling into infinity...Overgrown continuos telling the story of Cosmos in the lane, but this is back when the crew suddenly died in a collision against the invisible gigantic round energy source mentioned earlier.
Twilight hit reminds me of Darren's previous works, a more rhythmic and melodic piece with a dark accent that oscillates its way to oblivion and fades away.
Aki could work as a concept work, but Tonbo, the last piece, seems to have a very unique character, naive, childish and hopeful, anyway towards the second half, it finally grows into a stronger entity that suddenly disappears in the horizon.
Aki is clearly one of the best -or at least one my favorite- records of 2006, an album with a heavy and deep substantial content and some beautiful detailed shapes that conduct a draining, strong and sharp experience through Darren's notion of an Autumn in Japan. |
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