coldvenice – Surrealistic times in this place
Surrealistic times in this place
coldvenice
EP
Slushwave
Liam Murphy
December 30, 2022
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Devotional objects, when removed from their source, leave a detached spiritual signal that lingers. There’s contrasting emotion in such a situation: relief in finding and interpreting these fragments, but a strange otherworldliness to such transmissions as their source remains ultimately unknowable.
The concept of A GUIDE TO INNER LIGHT came when Mark Templeton discovered a cassette tape in a library back in 2019, its contents filled with sounds coming from someone named Rev.LV. What he heard were meditative sounds, rescued from the brink of disappearing. To preserve its memory, Templeton reassembled its contents into nine tracks, ensuring they flow with both a melodic cadence and a sense of erosion.
Light 1 (Guided Narration) sets the tone for the upcoming tracks. “What clues would you need before you could see their inner light?” says the narrator, as the weeping strings and fractured grains loop around. Underneath the soothing tones, something beautiful and ineffable is being contemplated.
The constant looping becomes an essential feature for the album, repeating a memorable melody as crackle begins to form. Presence 1 (Piano Tape Loop Apr 25) shows, though, that things can degrade further. Ephemeral piano chords cycle through in a jerking fashion, while the grainy noise revolves, surfacing to become submerged again. It carries a moment of clarity, just before it sifts back to its ruffled audio quality.
This continues throughout the rest of the piano tape loops. As Mark tinkers with these melodies, the triumphant spirituality coming from their original source radiates through. Reflection 2 (Piano Tape Loop 3) and Water 3 (Piano Tape Loop Apr 24) tell a different story. Keys begin to distort, a sign of faith wavering. Yet Rev.LV’s spirit endures in their most sensitive state. Yet on Water 2 (Piano Tape Loop 5), more gaps of light shine through the piano’s overtly devotional quality.
The serene violins of Light 2 (Guided Narration) play us out of these found fragments with a meaningful end. The beauty here is often not in the grandeur of the strings, but in the small details that mean so much more. “... that hardly detectable glint in the eye, that reveals an inner happiness, then you are seeing an inner light”, says the narrator as the strings fade out of view.
When the original sender disappears, the light of that person remains within the ephemeral signal they’ve delivered. As Mark carefully reinterprets these recordings, the meditative tone becomes melancholic in places. However, Rev.LV’s signal still echoes. Presented as a delicately resonant archive rather than a meditative passage of enlightenment. But an inner light still shines.
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