Deep / Float
Psychological nonsense says people can’t differentiate between good and bad criticism, a kind of comfort blanket and saving grace for the industry standard to remain “it’s all good”. There is a difference between making an example and saying something is “as is”, for instance. Just as there is room to disseminate positive and negative opinion as an overriding factor of what makes journalism interesting. Taking all the thought-provoking stuff out of a review, for example, is the same as ridding it of its impurity; it has no colour or character henceforth. Perfection is imperfect, and this is what a lot of people, even those who profess to know a thing or two, fail to understand.
When this crux comes to music, similar supposed “rules” – or “hangups”, apply. Subjectivity ultimately wins out, and ultimately makes the final decision. For without it, we’d have no mass media culture, or in the relatively underground music scene, a fruity flavoured version of mainstream culture. In ambient, drone is the wallpaper for the vacuum that ensues if we don’t fill up our lives with something worthwhile. But paradoxically, it is also the key component of what makes our lives interesting if we have become obsessed with what we’re encased in. Saaad, on the other hand, dispel every doubt of bad criticism with their gorgeous, touching music. “Deep/Float” makes a fine testament for what drone can be like at its most beautiful, transcendent level, full of impurity and imperfection that serves to increase your affection towards it.
The foundation of “Deep/Float” is dark, cinematic drone, along the lines of Seconds Before Awakening’s dense loveliness. Like that artist, Saaad maintain experimentality throughout their release function – the exhumation of drone vapour; the breathing of air in a sterile dark ambient world. If I sound in a veil of criticism of dark ambient, I’ll open up: the insincere, characterless stuff bores me. There is such a thing as cheesily dark, or missing the pathological as an interleave. If I can’t feel the soul, it’s of little worth, since I outrun myself quicker than Hussein Bolt. “After Love”, meanwhile, the finale track of Saaad’s album here, pours needed light on a concussive darkness built from strong drone beds, and in this, they succeed in achieving catharsis where many have minorly failed.
A splendour runs amidst the most penetrating parts of the LP. These beds of drone are not just concussive, they are diastolic, being a measurement for heart rate and a crumbler of pent-up energy. Operating as a type of spiritual high cloaked in gothic colours, a photograph with dim lighting but a bright subject, Saaad know just when to turn off the lights, yet how to become inviting in their own shadow at the same time. That’s not something any form of psychological nonsense would have you understand, and for now, we’re best with the deep float.