The relaxed tension of Field Rituals is encapsulated in tight-locked sound swatches – strings, brittle digital synth tones, warped samples, radiant electronic textures, and the careworn fuzziness of an acoustic guitar – with a distinctly cinematic edge. To his credit, Koen Holtkamp – who runs the Apestaartje label and aids in the endeavors of ambient-electronica outfit, Mountains – takes these impressionistic audio collages to an even more rarefied aesthetic level. Holtkamp’s arrangements are luminous, showing delicacy, drama and passion in his strident development of certain nuances privy to such musical realms.
A wistful piano phrase plays in the richly layered electric thrum of “Walker”, while cars slush through the streets and papers shuffle loudly, and displaced vocal slices burble away to themselves. There is little change, but the mesmeric effect is akin to sitting in an anonymous street-side store, a random melodrama crackling on a television in the background, watching the bustle of people flying in and out, taking in the empty space.
In fact, a good deal of the album has to do with a giving over of the self to an anonymous state. Holtkamp’s musical signature is neither particularly strong nor distinctive, but it’s blurring and drifting results in some meditative passages that are exquisitely subdued or messily infectious, and buoyed by a soft, warm furnace. Also coming out of this castration is a somewhat strengthened ability to pursue the albums central concern – a sort of mingling with the elemental – from a handful of different directions. While always supported by a common underlying equilibrium, tracks such as “Half Light” take up a certain peripatetic spontaneity, structured around a solid rhythm section but overlaid with spindly guitar breaks and various electronic quirks, while others such as “Night Swimmer” exude a sense of resignation and quiet authority in their huskily crooned mantras and eastern-influenced scales and sub-melodies. Little in the way of higher forms germinate in this rich soil, yet Field Rituals nevertheless amounts to an album of steadily emergent charm.
Max Schaefer
