Federico Dal Pozzo’s latest Krysalisound recording is full of minute pleasures, an ice race avoiding the pinnacle of an all out avalanche. Instead, the sound waves are condensed drone designs based on sound design in its purest form: hum and counterpoint.
Much of the music relies on driving ground fissures, trips to metropolis, and like being stuck in a bunker, a firm grasp of the natural architecture of buildings. So in all, the music is wide ranging with all the experimentalism of a electromagnet inside a complex tape loop studio. One just has to tap on “play” to drift off to the hums of wonder within…
My favourite thing about “VZ0” is its concentric circles, its eddies and loops. These loops transform your sonic environment and offset any energy required to listen to them, meaning they are positively enveloping. I find nothing negative about this record, it’s very pure, and succinctly put in its stylistic symbolism. It seems to enact a constructed set of poles that keep tessellating among moving waves of dozy sound.
And there are washes of rhythmic passivity too, nothing aggressively done, just true float, real drift and weaving, like a spellcasting, mischievous witch, sunning herself in a weather mirror. These sounds move slowly over the lands like rays of the sun, forever sparkling and coming from a much deeper, encrusted whole.
Perhaps one’s true intent becomes known from drones like these. In the searches for deeper meaning, and in general deep thought about life, the mirror reflects back on itself to a projection of powerful musical dualism to soothe the soul. A just exercise, given that the music is only heard when humans choose to listen. Krysalisound label is this under the radar that you can afford to give a unassuming drone suite some companionship, and possibly an endorsement, because this particular experiment is very fine indeed.
So yes, not an avalanche of white noise, rather some of the quietest yet most ruminative music I’ve heard in the last 12 months. Recommendable lusciousness for Steve Roach and Robert Rich fans alike, it’s sure to put a wry smile on the sleep ambient scene’s brow.