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CD Feature/ asher: "directions"

  Tobias

„Leerraum“ (the name of the Swiss label behind this release) translates to “ullage”, “voidage” or “head space” respectively, so one can place a safe bet on expecting a certain amount of minimalism when it comes to aestethics (the label logo merely consist of an open and a closed rectangular bracket, and the album comes in an elegant white picture-frame-like cardboard sleeve with the record company’s letters engraved in its back, a smooth and shining white inlay with nothing but a few formal production credits and some silvery ants crawling around the place, as well as a (you guessed it!) white CD, carrying the album title), print run (a mere 150 copies will be pressed – period), marketing and public relations (a tiny amount of promos sent out has resulted in a tiny amount of reviews and meta-information) and music. But even within this clearly defined space, “directions” is a testimony of a new stripped-down philosophy of listening.

„Asher lives in Boston, USA“ is all the leerraum-homepage has to say about this disc’s creator, but after absorbing its sounds, it seems as though these words are indeed everything that needs to be said. To be more precise, words are a distraction when trying to describe “directions” – and there are more reasons to that than the fact that you need to be very quiet to actually hear something at all without turning up your stereo full-notch. There are three tracks here, all of them around a quarter of an hour long and with striking resemblances. The basic building blocks are crispy vinyl crackling, low bass hummings, ondulating drones, intermittant waves of warm feedback and occasional high-tone clusters. It is the way they interact, their pitch and their funtionality which differentiates the individual pieces: “01”, with its regularly pulsed cuts and spacious backdrops has a very open character, gently coaxing the listener forward and introduding him to this world in white. On “02”, a black gauze veil covers the eyes, syruppy feedback fills the cavities between the increasingly heavy breathes of sound and burps of sine waves appear from nowhere. The potentially alarming ambiance is however softened by the continual substantiation from its undefined genesis to a state of vivid liveliness, bustling with a plethora of parallel lines of progression. The atmospheric deepening reaches its climax in the final part of the trilogy, which cools down almost to the point of absolute zero, with particle movement restricted to a minimum – the crackling has slowed down considerably and suddenly becomes the music’s axis, around which all other elements flow like lava in a cotton candy machine. Words fail in this territory, because there is nothing left to talk about – the mind drifts through phases of comfort and estrangement, while the body sits in silence.

There are two phenomena which need to be imparted here: While one should suspect such discreet compositions to vanish completely from the radar of consciousness, they create an extrememly dense net, which soaks up the observer entirely – you will find it hard turning this off again. And secondly, the closer one listens, the less random the structures appear and the more one discovers beautiful and imaginative details. Even when there seems to be nothing happening at all, there are invisible currents running through a meticolously carved-out riverside. This “Leerraum” isn’t emtpy at all!

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Leerraum Records