Sometimes We All Disappear documents the enduring collaboration between Canadian artists Jamie Drouin (suitcase modular synth, portable radio) and Lance Austin Olsen (amplified objects, audio cassettes). Recorded in Victoria, West Canada, shortly before Drouin’s move to Berlin, the album stands out for its sonic restraint, embracing environmental ambiance and field sound as active partners in music-making. Working with long takes and casual edits, the duo divides and rearranges their source improvisations, yielding a form that’s equal parts assemblage, process piece, and immersive drift.
The result is a music that privileges small/large contrast: subtle, nearly subliminal gestures from percussion, objects, and electronic hums that build into periods of dense activity before falling back into near-silence. The sound is never entirely domestic nor overtly abstract; it hovers somewhere between field recording and electroacoustic collage. The pair’s in-the-moment responsiveness, coupled with a willingness to use absence as a dramatic element, produces a listening space alert to ambient intrusion and the listener’s environment - a sonic field as porous as it is present.
Sometimes We All Disappear refuses traditional narrative, letting ordinary and alien sounds intermingle in slow, drifting arcs. It is music for the patient ear, rewarding repeat listening with its careful interplay, offhand beauty, and the uncanny way meaning arises from delicate juxtaposition and the interplay of sound, memory, and disappearance.
