Labels: self released
Review by: Captain Fidanza
Soundscapes. What the fuck is a soundscape? I’ve always assumed it was a bit like a landscape but instead of seeing it, you hear it. It’s a landscape you see with your ears. This EP is constructed from soundscapes and fairly grand they are too, evocative of almost anything you allow them to be.
If Yasujiro Ozu had ever used anything more than the most delicately unobtrusive music imaginable in any of his films, this is the sort of thing he would have used. Like Ozu’s films, these six pieces of music feel like elegies for something lost, or perhaps even elegies for the very act of losing something.
Incidentally, when I say “lost” I don’t mean misplaced behind the cushions on your sofa, I mean lost forever; like the moment you realise that the person you love has gone and no matter what you do or what you say, you’re never going to feel the delicate kiss of their skin against yours again. You’ll never again be standing in a doorway on a cold winter evening, sheltering from the cold and the rain and the snow, only for them to appear out of nowhere and dissipate the entire world with a single squeeze of your hand. You’ll never again be able to walk with them through the August dawn as you both make your way home after the best night of your life, when it felt like everything existed for only the pair of you and nothing else mattered or had ever mattered so much as those moments you were experiencing, second by second, as you walked home together. And maybe when you got back home, the day was just beginning, so instead of going straight to bed you went out into the garden and shared a glass of orange juice and when you offered them the last of the glass, they smiled at you and it swelled your heart like nothing ever had before because you knew that they knew you were going to leave that last mouthful for them and there you stood for just a moment more and saw how happy it made them feel to know they were safe with you and that they would always be safe, no matter what. And you went inside and you went upstairs and you both got undressed and you both got into bed, but the warmth of the room meant you needed nothing more than the heat from each other’s bodies, so you lay there, together, in warmth, in comfort, in love, softly, safely, with nothing to intrude but the beating of your hearts. And maybe there was a single second, just one, that lasted for two and it had never happened before and will never again, because that second contained your whole life and you were exactly where you needed to be and everything was perfect.
But if only that second could have lasted, if only you both could have lived inside that second for ever, if only you’d listened, if only you’d caught that bus that night, if only you’d have answered the phone that time or made that effort, if only you’d gone out with them on that evening they met the person they’re now lying beside. But you didn’t, you didn’t and now it’s gone forever.