Falling Into The Sky (AL)

by: Alan Lockett
Total views: 594

In recent years Anthony Paul Kerby (APK), boss of new-born Blue Oasis and don of DataObscura, has produced a series of recordings of atmospheric electronica, chiefly under nom de disque The Circular Ruins (TCR), wherein fully four decades of electronic music worlds collude. Informed by Riley and Reich, Schultze and Eno, with more recent updates from ’90s/’00s ambient electronica of the Namlook and Biosphere school. From early excursions in 2002-3, Confluence and Realm of Possibility, on to the recent Their Subtle Purpose, APK has worked on refining his blend. Latest instalment, Falling Into the Sky, represents both a departure from, and a continuation of, the TCR tradition. The sounds of departure, towards a more expansive sense of weight with less density, may be seen as drawing on APK’s programme for this work – an envisioning of a kind of ineffable lightness of being, one where scientific laws are inverted, where a journey might call forth not action, but a form of escapism, of driftng away. On one level perhaps a metaphysical extension of the early 90s armchair voyager notion of “Travelling without moving”. The image evoked by Falling into the sky works suggestively for the phonaut, when visual and metaphor are patched into the eponymous audio. Musically the product of more conventional analogue recording methods of overlaying tracks of real-time playing, the set’s eschewal of loops makes for organic life and movement. Opener and title track spreads wide-open pads across the sound field while APK intervenes post-production to fray the edges as if in musical mezzotint; a lulling drone that pushes towards theme statement hosts wisps of half-melodies, threaded through like glinting embroidery, darting mercurially above the drift zone. The piece proceeds through ebb-and-flow motion, relenting then resurging, bespeckled with the subtle timbral detail that characterizes TCR’s oeuvre. The sonic terrain, especially in early-mid proceedings, seems to overlap with that of Lammergeyer, APK’s more bashful sister project, an impression reinforced by the renunciation of rhythm, but even more by the prevailing tenor of filmic elegy. However, the sky, as the fall becomes deeper, darkens and intensifies, with TCR’s signature architectural density settling around the “Paracelsus” triptych. Captured environments lightly woven into a filmy veil of sound drape themselves ever more heavily across proceedings. “It is always too late” has the feel of complementary bookend to the prologue’s companion piece, reprising keynote thematics, providing powerful if somewhat sombre closure, short epilogue notwithstanding. Falling into the Sky, overall, impresses as a substantial work of sonorous reflectivity imbued with a deep melancholy, nevertheless succeeding in enfolding within itself a glimmering luminosity – suggestive of the spirit of humanism in the face of the sky’s supreme indifference at our fall. This second release on Blue Oasis would appear to have the label well under way.