A Season of Loss (Feb 5, Simulacra) is weary and reflective as it looks across at a bleak season, one wrapped up in death, decay, and dissolvement. However, as the thick ambient textures continue to amass, looping over and over, they create a comforting see-saw effect, like a mother cradling a baby in her arms. A Season of Loss is often pained, dejected, forlorn – even lost – but it hasn’t given up the ghost, and the resulting music provides an opportunity for growth and learning. Through the balm of its soothing, vapourous ambient tones, the music offers encouragement while deep in the trenches and knee-deep in the mire.
The diminished ambient loops are clothed in a deep melancholia. The circular nature of the loop ensures that the same cloudy thoughts cycle around in the music as they do the spirit. The music’s atmosphere is cloudy, too, its tones muted and lowered into the murk. But even when it seems to be drowning, the tones are still beautiful, offering up sleek, dull glimmers in a cowl-covered land.
‘Narcosis’ is able to pull itself up for a quick breather thanks to its cresting ambient loop, but a darker tonality soon drags it back under; the process is repeated over and over again, a never-ending nightmare, where a dream is a tomb rather than an escape. The aftereffects of loss stain every note, but ultimately, and underneath it all, a record of grit and resolve emerges. Stung by loss, the music has tasted the salt of its sea and has beaten it off like a prize fighter. Death cannot be defeated, but one can perhaps find wisdom, courage, and meaning after it has come to claim what it always wanted.