Off The Sky, Pleq

Questing ambient and soundscape exponents with previous form over a slew of labels—Home Normal, Taâlem, Constellation Tatsu, Databloem, dataObscura, Ephre, and Basses Frequences, for starters—commune to create a whole beyond the sum of its differently located parts. Product of a Massillon–Denver–Warsaw pact hatched by a brace of Jasons, Bryant (Infraction) of Ohio hosting Corder (offthesky) of Colorado for a meeting of spirits with Bartosz Dziadosz (Pleq) of Masovia, A Thousand Fields brings together voices from their prior individual and collaborative Muses to mesh with fresh emergences at the intersection between ambient, minimalism, 4th world, found sound, drone, and post-classical composition.

Seven uneasy pieces. The duo draw the drapes of an abandoned stage set. A head(y) cinema—a space waiting for timbres to exhale; a rumble, an ominous string swell, dissonant synth shivers. Suspense—uneasy, queasy, eerie. Tension without resolution, sometimes broken—a single piano string or foot shuffle (“Ashes of America”), sometimes paused for thoughtful resonance—a violin saw (“Delicate Exit”), a distant harp (Witch Season”), a drowning string section (“Simulacromancer”). Sudden variations in volume, minimal movements in apparent stillness, define the dynamic, requiring adjustment to default distracted listening mode. A strategic deployment of silence, or rather a still resonant air left by the decay of a musical gesture, is part of this album’s unusual presence, at once delicate and weighty—part artful arrangement, part production prowess.

A Thousand Fields is a genuinely exploratory work, an ambient less ordinary, a classical more post-, a drone less prone to be blown off course, while taking you down some paths less trodden.