azurescens

There are three strains that come together here, approaches linked to some intense work in the last few years: hauntology, ambient, and ASMR. I love these impulses but hate all three of these terms, and have been working (perhaps to no better end) with these terms: “flickering,” “softness,” and “references.” The close-up world of the smartphone’s mic and speaker and screen has brought this activity to a froth. The references here are soundtracks and weedy parlor room psychedelia like Broadcast, and the flickering happens in both timbre and harmony. The softness is that of the falling patient, only partially anesthetized, beginning to speak as she descends into a negotiated state of suspended sleep. Bandleader Irwin sent me this statement via email after I asked who they all were, really: “ssabæ is really just friends from very different horizons improvising together in very different settings; sometimes high sometimes low sometimes inside sometimes outside basically listening together to what some sounds have to say.”