From Asia comes something new from Futurebum (Tristin Morin), the digital release of Tesseract Parietal. Just released on Underlying Themes Recordings at the tail end of February, it’s a nuanced ambient record with whispering voices as heard on the opener, Pythia. The initial atmosphere is timid and a bit of a darkened corridor. The artist shared with Toneshift: “I was working with a Yoruban woman who was living in the town I was staying in. She was trading Akashic readings and reiki for some production work on a project she was working on. It came to my attention that the crow may be a totem for me.” This appears in mask form in the cover art I assume the artist himself dons in the forest.
There are five mostly long tracks here, that range from 7 to 11 minutes each. Incorporated are collaged field recordings that blend perfectly into a swooping drone blanket rising on the spaced out meditation of S P L V G N M T H. The artist shared with me that the title came after contemplating the mythology of crows and the afterlife, when he wrote the line “stop living in a myth”. Without the background it feels like hypnosis in progress, or I’d assume being in a higher state of consciousness. Incorporating a reedy, bamboo-like percussion that circulates and repeats and trickles. Next up is the elusively ambient and cheekily titled Math Salts, which divorced from its visuals sounds like a inspired travelogue of a curious journey into the unknown. Once you add video things become a different story:
Symbolese is the longest running track here and the most grainy and harsh. As the title would suggest symbols Futurebum also shared: “Much of the album was also built on the use of (attempted) Chaos magick, and sigils” which derive themselves from various symbologies and magic. As a child I was completely fascinated by the realm of magic, often playing a Houdini-like character at family outings – but this is a more ancient in its origins, approach and effect. The track is like a storybook spell, end to end the sound is illuminated by a jagged, low-hum bass drone, painted lightly with crystalline tones. The din continues right into Construct to contain Constructs, the finale.
Now it seems we are experiencing a giant chasm form. This is a conducted noise of contortions and broad spectrum. It’s a veiled sound, yet still engine-like, so this skirts defining where its placed between the super/natural worlds. In the last few minutes we are left in suspension with the most minimal gaseous detritus, fading fast, from memory, but hindsight would say what Confucius might underestimate, that was one heck of a ride into deep listening.
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