Somewhere is a place we have been waiting years to experience: a climate of sounds and spirits that gathers quietly and disperses with hazy grace, the result of a chance connection and long term correspondence. Over the past decade, ambient drone composer zakè (aka Zach Frizzell) has established his identity with numerous solo works, and his open-minded approach to peers has resulted in a complement of communal efforts; Pallette (who chooses to be known only by that moniker) has crafted no fewer than sixty releases in a particular style of looping, otherworldly delicacy, including the PITP highlight Pathways (2020). About that album, Frizzell recalls, “Rarely do I receive a demo that so absolutely floors me, where I know in an instant that I have to help bring a person’s music to the world.” Following a phase of only occasional contact, the two artists conceived a vision for collaboration, and Somewhere is the remarkable result.
Opener, “In the Belly of a Whale”, is a side-long suspension of time, where various harmonies are situated across the stereo field, gliding through space-time as rumbling bass tones surface in swells like the looming leviathan of its title. The piece offers a generous amount of space in which to get lost, evoking distant cloud masses and atmospheric static – all the spectra and waves that are constantly passing through us, causing imperceptible vibrations on a molecular level. The pensive aura of title track, “Somewhere”, summons an emotional limbo where the shifting fog of the backdrop is punctuated by the slow pulse of a single note, a beacon of light across the roiling immensity. Above a bed of quietly crackling surface noise, hints of a half-remembered melody create an anchor point that keeps the entire arrangement from vanishing into some dark obscurity.
The clamor of a Japanese train station – excerpted from Pallette’s archive of field recordings – commences “Last Letter”, creating an unexpectedly concrete, human atmosphere. “I often imagine myself as a ghost,” they note, “and include such elements to create a sense of place and realism that transcends the sounds around them.” The hiss and hum of these environments underscore the whole composition, as an achingly beautiful loop plays out with slight but affecting variances, at once texturally organic and orchestrally harmonic. “Breathe” is a comparatively brief piece, like a single, slow exhalation, a loosening of the shoulders and a level calm that blankets the mind with sunset hues, setting the stage for the final act of the album.
About the origins of these arrangements, Frizzell remarks, “We each had a set of foundational ideas and fragments on reserve for the right project, and after the first few exchanges, things started forming quite quickly; it was almost as if we had been working together already, without knowing it.” Fittingly, “Don’t Be Afraid” bears the emotional tenor and intensity of many of zakè’s Orchestral Tape Studies recordings, with its booming low-end, cascading strings and powerful midrange drone, whose forces are massive enough to warrant a three-minute fade out.
Closing the album is “Far, Far Away”, an extended coda to the transportive journey crafted from this cross-continental meeting of minds, and a collapsing of distance into a singular moment in the endlessness of time. Pallette states that their main creative inspiration is “a yearning for things to change and get better”, and while that wish often feels at odds with reality, these artists offer us a rare chance to cloak ourselves in sound and explore boundless inner worlds of our own making.
