It All Falls Apart - The Sight Below

It All Falls Apart

The Sight Below
Ghostly International.

SCQ Rating: 76%

What seemed so exemplary about Glider, Rafael Anton Irisarri AKA The Sight Below’s 2008 debut, was how it introduced his craft fully formed. His ability to evoke complicated strains of hope and melancholy from looped guitars was enough to turn any laptop purist green with envy, while even his fondness for 4/4 beats fronted an audiophile-worthy understudy of distinct details and subtle, offsetting rhythms. In short, Glider presented an artist perfecting one of electronica’s most compelling subgenres live-off-the-floor and its iron-tight focus left little need for second offerings. Fittingly, It All Falls Apart acknowledges the finite possibilities of continuing Glider’s dancefloor-cinematics, stripping back its thumping beats and diving into the murky echoes of Irisarri’s rippling guitar-work.

If Glider was understandably misinterpreted as an homage to Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas project, It All Falls Apart imparts a more sprawling facet of The Sight Below’s unique sound that suggests a closer affinity for shoegaze. With his signature beats marginalized to later tracks, The Sight Below devotes the spotlight of ‘Shimmer’ and ‘Fervent’ to his effect-laden six-strings, creating waves of ebbing drones that bleed into one another, all grays and blues. Think of it as shoegaze evaporating; its muddled guitars like upside-down icicles dripping toward the heavens, forming cloud-heavy structures from whispered progressions. Some of this inherent robustness owes credit to Slowdive’s Simon Scott, who reportedly contributed to the whole of It All Falls Apart and offered insights toward Irisarri’s expansive new compositions (none more so than ‘Stagger’, the thirteen-minute closing track that meanders but never aimlessly, dawdles but never tediously). What else could encompass shoegaze in the year 2010 as truthfully as this series of muddled explorations, swagger-less and spectral?

Like The Field’s strategy on Yesterday & Today, Irisarri permits It All Falls Apart’s extensive track-lengths for the sake of mixing new techniques with older ones… and it’s time well-spent. The metronome-like pulse of Glider still finds some vistas to occupy here, pushing the Copia-era Eluvium haze of ‘Burn Me Out From the Inside’ forward or sifting between the surface of ‘Through the Gaps In the Land’ and its dim oblivion. Besides these two tracks showing off the subtle evolution Irisarri first promised with last fall’s Murmur EP, the reemergence of some beat-driven compositions goes far in complimenting this follow-up’s new direction. Also in line with Yesterday & Today is how The Sight Below’s first vocal presence (courtesy of Tiny Vespers singer Jesy Fortino) is a first cover (Joy Division’s ‘New Dawn Fades’) which should thrill some noir-minded indie-kids as thoroughly as fans of gloomy electronica. Both tragically brooding mood-music and fatalistic dancefloor fodder, It All Falls Apart matches its cover-art by sounding, dare I say, cosmopolitan… the type of record that evokes numbed sensuality as clearly as it does overcast landscapes.

The Sight Below (SCQ's Year-End Questionnaire Part II)

Few artists reign a sound so perfect and addictive as this wonderful guest. Besides releasing Glider, one of my favourite albums released in 2008, the man only known as The Sight Below recently dropped Murmur EP, an elegant update on his subtly shifting repertoire. Filling us in on his current listening, The Sight Below also provides some details on his many future projects.

SCQ: What have been some of your favourite records of 2009? Gush away!

Yagya - Ringing
The Caretaker - Persistent Repetition of Phrases
Tiny Vipers - Life on Earth
Simon Scott - Navigare
Ben Frost - By The Throat
Teenage Filmstars - Star (i bought a reissue this year)
The Cure - Disintegration (sounds as good as it did 20 years ago!)

SCQ: Be it from the radio, lost on Myspace or from your roster, what songs could you not stop spinning?

Simon Scott - 'Under Crumbling Skies'
The Chameleons - 'Less Than Human'
The Caretaker - 'Lacuna Amnesia'
Tiny Vipers - 'Dreamer'

SCQ: Seldom celebrated but crucial to the album’s identity is cover-art. Can you offer any shortlist of personal favourites from the past year?

Anything on the Miasmah label this year was absolutely fantastic. Erik has brilliant design concept. Same goes for Ghostly International - some great stuff on the label.

Also, some of the covers on Type this year were gorgeous (Mokira's Persona is great!).

SCQ: When you look back on what transpired this year, what will stand out as your most memorable professional moment(s) of 2009?

So many good things happened this year. I think some of the best experiences were playing the Ghostly 10 showcases in the US and EU (including Berghain in Berlin), playing Sonar Festival in Barcelona (joined by Simon Scott on the guitars), playing at MUTEK 10 in Montreal, playing together with Fennesz at Node Festival in Italy, and doing a UK tour with Simon and Svarte Greiner. This was a lovely year and have kept really busy so far!

SCQ: Most of us probably haven’t thought as far as New Years Eve plans but still, looking forward, what do you have on the horizon for 2010?

A new TSB album coming out in March 2010, including some songs I did with Simon Scott. Also, I have a remix I did for Echospace coming out early in the year.

There is also going to be a mini-LP on Immune early 2010 and a proper Miasmah follow-up to "Daydreaming."

Murmur EP - The Sight Below

Murmur EP

The Sight Below
Ghostly International.

SCQ Rating: 75%

This late in the year, with so many year-end considerations needling my brain as if their inclusions, exclusions and inevitable order mean something altogether crucial for the survival of mankind, I often wonder how Glider would’ve fared had it been released when I discovered it in February of 2009. It’s a brief contemplation that usually ends in my deep-down assurance that The Sight Below’s debut full-length would’ve mopped the floor with much of 2009’s competition, let alone 2008’s. And while I’ll have to wait until 2010 to meet The Sight Below’s second LP head-on, there’s something perfectly timed about Murmur EP.

It became habitual for me, this past winter, to stretch out on the couch an hour or so past midnight, wrap headphones around my ears and listen to Glider in its entirety. Yes, part of that routine likely had to do with The Sight Below’s wintry feel – all dreary guitar and barren soundscapes – but what really saved that album for nocturnal listening was how enveloping it was. None of that weightless magic has been lost on Murmur EP, where padded beats and distant ambience provide the same stirring pools of cinematic techno we’ve come to expect… only this time more adventurous. All that’s familiar about ‘Murmur’ is ultimately propelled by its revved-up BPM; a quiet distinction that permits equally subtle additions like echoed samples that trace back to Detroit Techno. Even the 4/4 beats - often considered the backbone to The Sight Below’s sound – have shifted from their measured particulars to a muffled dancefloor style, intertwined with uneven bass, grimy yet refined. As carefully cousined as ‘Murmur’ is to the beat-heavy Glider material, ‘Wishing Me Asleep’ is a humble walk outside his discography. Alternating between bass-heavy passages and still-life atmospherics, ‘Wishing Me Asleep’ exercises his customary sound while occasionally stretching its drama, handicapping its beats, and finding new possibilities.

Of the remixes, Eluvium catapults the title track from No Place For Us EP into gauzy clouds of peppered percussion while Simon Scott suffocates the beat altogether in a thunderous abyss. These takes are fun to play back-to-back with their respective originals, mostly because Eluvium and Scott both seem wary about disturbing The Sight Below’s signature sound. Even without considering The Sight Below’s choices for remixers (or, say, cover-art), his releases have always meshed fluidly into an overarching grayscale where his palette and moods have always layered over one another. And though Murmur EP doesn’t cause a rift in that bleak, comforting universe-unto-itself, these two new songs do flirt with styles outside pre-defined boundaries and tinker with Glider’s game-plan. Featuring a remixed second-glance of his past and new material to usher in future ideas, Murmur EP is about as satisfying as a stop-gap release can be and, you bet, ideal for winter-walking.

Glider - The Sight Below

Glider

The Sight Below
Ghostly International.

SCQ Rating: 88%

Over the past two years I’ve taught myself to thoroughly screen any potential electronica purchases. For one, tons of artists – be it drone, ambient, laptop beats, whatever – sound virtually interchangeable but the greater risk is that you could spend your entire life hunting down new electronic music and never, ever find that disc you were destined to hear. As such with any issues of quality control, I’ve become a first-listen critic - haphazardly selecting a few cuts off a given disc before rendering silent opinion – and because this scene has so many homogenized niches, my search for greatness can become pretty depressing. You begin to question whether your parameters for greatness were actually flukes borne from a specific time period or emotional peak. You find yourself disappointed in records because they fail to conform to your blind assumptions about their name or aesthetic. Things stop making sense.

An album like Glider brings everything back into clear focus and has reminded me of my passion for this scene. While its tone and vibe are fairly commonplace – emotive ambience, four/four beats, cinematic synth-sweeps – how it’s constructed and performed is gorgeously unique. The Sight Below (who prefers to keep his birth-name private) uses each of Glider’s nine tracks to explore the capabilities of combining steadfast four/four rhythms, compressed guitar and keys… and while the results should, by all means, sound monotonous, they instead combine to form a faultless tapestry of emotional cliffs and valleys. ‘At First Touch’ establishes the setting with ominous, reverberating keys swelling coolly over a persistent beat. Beneath its steady thump is the first hint of Glider’s depth; a second rhythm, occasionally detectable and drifting up from beneath the mix. Throughout the flexing bass-line of ‘Dour’, the flooding moods of ‘Life’s Fading Light’ or ‘A Fractured Smile’s ecstatic pulse, Glider sounds like a heartbreaking ambient record somehow complimented by the dance party your neighbour is throwing downstairs. While the compositions are remarkable without context, I’m blown away to discover that Glider was recorded live off the floor as The Sight Below builds each layer before our ears and then adds his minimal, nostalgic guitar. His graceful spontaneity provides these tracks with the heartbeat necessary to ward off any needless repetition, while his focus prevents the excesses that most live recordings cater to.

Alternating between still-life soundtracks and dancefloor euphoria, this is the record you want to hear next to frozen beaches, empty parks or in the still of night overlooking your city’s horizon. I keep telling myself an album of such singular sound shouldn’t be this exhilarating yet its strength is in the details. No two tracks share the same melancholy’s feel or metronomic beat’s structure as each bends its mood and tempo expertly. Like its topographic cover implies, Glider is an airborne transport that’ll move you over earth and water, giving you an aural weightlessness and breathless view from above all things.