Whilst music is a form of organised sound, it’s also fundamentally tied into that inescapable constant – time. Measured in beats and bars, it meshes with our breaths, heartbeats, synapses, and all sorts of repeating rhythmic patterns and sequences. All of these sonic markers gather in our memories, as we understand what happened before, in relation what happens now, and next.
But our sense of time is fluid, a second, a minute or an hour can all feel hugely variable. Our frame of mind, the time of day, the company, the location, and endless other factors can all make time feel like it’s anything but fixed.
Yorkshire Modular Society’s new album Fiery the Angels Fell is a great example of music that zones in on this elasticated quality. The single hour-long track, that’s continually dripped in a coating which tugs and pulls at the very fabric of time.
Centred on a synth based glowing pulse of energy, the whole piece rises and falls like any repeating event. But everything here is blurred, covered in layers of silt, every element spinning just off centre enough to create a woozy wobbling quality. The effect is disorientating as every horizon is split into several options, but despite the chance of near sea sickness, this new world is quickly intoxicating.
Fiery the Angels Fell is the latest album by this hugely prolific UK based artist (their Bandcamp page currently lists over 250 albums). This latest release depicts a huge planetary collision on its sleeve, the notes frame the piece as a memorial ‘to papa’, the label suggests the aesthetics of Bladerunner and Akira but for us, the appeal feels far more fundamental.
The album encompasses all these elements, but even considered purely as a frameless listening experience, it quickly encases the listener in a deep psychoactive form of ambience. A full 60 minutes of incremental, and imperceptible changes in intensity, as fogs gathers and spaces clear and mutate.
Time and again, the span of Fiery the Angels Fell loses you in endless regenerations of something little more than a swelling of sound. The initial and incorrect assumption is that this little more than sleepy, maybe even a touch gloomy ambient music, vanishes in the opening seconds. What we do have however, is super potent, moodily triumphant music that that feels like you’ve been unexpectedly spiked with something head bending.
Whether played whilst relaxing, late at night, or whilst working, soundtracking forest walks, anytime or anywhere – Fiery the Angels Fell turns 20 minutes into a day, and an hour into a fleeting moment. In any mood, state or setting, its power is unchallenged – music to loop, and live in. Music to get gloriously lost in…
William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops series and tracks like Ludwig Wandinger’s stunning Adoration echoes feel like touch points in all this. Music that has emotion and soul but extracted and exhumed from infinite mirages and pure sonic phenomena. A balancing act at the razor edge where everything is both static and animated.
Whatever you may find the heart of Fiery the Angels Fell, it’s an album we’ve become obsessed with. A handy and easily portable safety blanket, used to encase yourself, in any situation, to activate a rippling, disorienting endless form of bliss.
Fiery the Angels Fell is released on 7 June on Dragon’s Eye Recordings
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