It’s hard to define the work of Shoeb Ahmad, but amorphousness and ambiguity is the beating heart of his latest album, Sea Songs, Dead Ends and Sleeping Pills. It’s the kind of record that exists at the indeterminable periods between night and day, when you’re not quite sure whether it’s a bright night or a murky day. In much the same way that Adrian Klumpes plays the piano, Ahmad processes his guitar to the point of no return, transforming it into the sound that forms the basis for most of the songs on this record. It’s interspersed with myriad field recordings and noises that I can’t quite place.
The music feels taut and brittle, awash with treble, adding to the fragility and, at times, uncomfortable stasis of the sound. Sea Songs… opens with the fidgety and haunting ‘Electric Fields’, layered with recordings of birds and rough metallic objects. For its five minutes it builds up a state of tension which never feels resolved. There’s an annoying white noise flooding the track which also appears on ‘Soft Disasters’ and most prominently on ‘Tangled’, much to the deficiency of the latter because it noticeably detracts from the listening experience.
The scratchy two-chord meditation ‘Headlights In My Eyes’ sucks you into its delay-soaked vortex, and Ahmad’s distant vocals renders a dream-like state within the maelstrom. ‘Birthday Girl’ is an unequivocal highlight, and also doubles as one of the barest numbers on Sea Songs. Spacious and ambient, the layers of guitars are meticulously interwoven to create a gorgeous piece of minimalism. Ditto the record’s final vignette, ‘This Is How You Fall Apart’, propelled forward by delayed guitar harmonics and faint brushstrokes of background noise. It’s a shame Ahmad didn’t explore this avenue further on Sea Songs, because it’s easy to hear his skill when he allows the space.
Dom Alessio
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