Fluid Sonic Fluctuation 110
Visionary Hours: Coalescence of Form
as kindly submitted as a review copy through Bandcamp download code by Hidden Vibes
Released on February 20, 2020
Catalogue number: HV054
Welcome to the newest review on Fluid Sonic Fluctuations which not only features an excellent recent album by Visionary Hours but also introduces a new type of recommendation / award I give to releases which through inspired, inventive and creative, composition, performance and / or sound sculpting conjure up striking sonic imagery in the mind and which I find to be unique subconscious listening experiences in particular. This prize is however focussed on the effect of the music itself and is identical to my highest recommended releases in terms of “rating” through review. To find out what I gave this album, read on. Visionary Hours is the experimental, Modern Classical infused Ambient project of British musician Hayden Berry who’s released most of his music on his own Preserved Sound label. Like you will find out later on in this review Visionary Hours music is pleasantly fluid in both its shapes as well as in its compositions, moving beyond pleasant ambience into more introspective and also quite saturated sonic territory. The aforementioned Preserved Sound label features a lovely collection of Ambient, Modern Classical and related fields of atmospheric music released on CD in hand-assembled packaging which also quite matches the honest introspective mindset I could sense through Visionary Hours’ music on Coalescence of Form. A similar kind of introspection I found when I looked up Home Normal, the label of this album’s mastering engineer Ian Hawgood who’s also a prolific solo artist himself which also features a wide collection of atmospheric music often featuring melancholic photographic artwork as well as having several curious sublabels. The version of Coalescence of Form I’m reviewing here is a 24-bit/48kHz high resolution download containing the 7 album tracks and also includes the great cover artwork by Taylor Lovelock in good quality, as kindly sent to me by the Hidden Vibes label (run by Endless Melancholy), which exists in a nice connection with the two aforementioned labels of maximum introspection through creative ambiences and Modern Classical music released in rather elegantly packaged limited CD editions. Now it’s time to dive into Coalescence of Form
Coalescence of Form begins with in motion slow, which is not only one of my favourite tracks on the album right from the beginning but also perfectly introduces the imagery that was conjured up in my mind while I was listening to this album, which is this misty, grey and mysterious but also peaceful river landscape. The combination of a triplet, dancing stereo electric guitar pattern, a warm melodic pattern on organ that shifts in quite uplifting ways as the track progresses as well as additional rhythmic tremolo guitar patterns creates the feeling of wandering near, or perhaps even in the river as you look through the mist at the strangely rippling water. The organ seems to voice the slow passing of time but also a sense of tranquility within the infinitely streaming water, the continuity of nature in this river landscape. Visionary Hours has excellently worked at refining the composition in such a way that it’s both minimalist and progressive at the same time, with the bass pattern of the organ emitting intense depth (of the river) but also sounding elegant and “dancing” with the guitars as well. Through fluidly flowing filtered delays Visionary Hours also brings out a lot of additional melodic and resonance based details within both the composition and sonic textures of the piece themselves. These delays do give the music quite a Dub Techno influenced kind of atmosphere too, though in this more within a Modern Classical direction of style which is more based on these image painting and story telling melodies and melodic patterns which both shows us the river landscape as well as tell a freely interpretable story in the mind of you as the listener. The ending of in motion slow lets us focus on the quite abstractly rippling tremolo guitar patterns as the music fades out slowly, like we close our eyes very slowly and let this image of the river landscape fade out and move towards the next piece. It has to be said that Visionary Hours does make great use of experimentation using effects and manipulations in his music on this album which does match the ambience very well whilst still being quite abstract in approach, helping to bring shape the sonic imagery very precisely. Following in motion slow, we have have no one to be seen, a piece which might indeed have a more simple and harmonically limited melody but the vivid imagery of the misty river landscape is here once again. The piece starts with calm and bright accordion tones being played, panned in the left channel. The texture of the tones is full of wavy resonances, but also (especially on headphones) has some lovely small bits of tape saturation and wavering consistency to its sound. The accordion tones in the right channel which enter quite early on in the piece blend together with the left channel to both accompany the slow main melody from the left channel as well as create richer chords. On in motion slow you can imagine the time of sunrise in the misty river landscape, a cycle of sun rays subtly and slowly moving over each other, keeping on appearing and disappearing (the accordion melodies) get filtered in the rippling river water (the filtered gate and delay effects). Feeling both like a study of a natural situation as well as a meditation on the peaceful qualities of the sun introducing its light and warmth to the river water in a new day the piece beautifully mixes elements of acoustic Drone music with Visionary Hours’ inspired effect work which again creates wonderful details to dive into the rich sonic image. Afterwards on feel it out walk in, we’re literally diving into the river as it were. Featuring warm piano arpeggios backed with a lovely swirling synth drone the piece seems to imagine the river landscape now being illuminated more brightly by the sun. The minimalist melody created by the piano arpeggios suggests the still continuing cycle of nature, the flow of the river as well as a hopeful kind of emotional ambience we could feel in our subconscious if we’d see the sun shine through a misty river landscape outside. The piano tones getting more and more modulated by what sounds like a Leslie speaker chorus type effect gives me the feeling of slowly moving into the water of the river, deeper and deeper, with our perception of vision and hearing becoming more and more distorted and rippled by the enveloping river water. The “residue” gate and tremolo effect that follows the piano tones in a delayed manner feels like the signification of a shadow following a duck or other animals swimming in the water, precisely but also modulated repeating its movements and getting more and more diffuse by the movement of the water. The rising and falling resonant filter of the droning synth makes for an excellent grounding base of the piece, feeling like the “body” of the river itself in its dense weight and size in which waves are moving over a much larger area with the river’s “force” audible in the dissonant chorus effected resonances flowing through the synth drone itself. Besides these rich details there’s one other thing I noticed in this piece which is quite subtle but definitely quite an essential part of the track, which is a slightly saturated wooden like resonant tone which appears at the start of every cycle of arpeggios and even through the progressing increase of the ripples in the music, works as a type of rhythmic guide for the layers themselves, a pulse which is there but more like a diffuse overtone than a tone fully in focus. On next piece zithering we approach what might be the eeriest moment of Coalescence of Form and its composition might feel a bit harder to imagine being linked to my aforementioned river landscape interpretation but in fact I can definitely still find it in this piece. Like you can see in the title, the piece does indeed feature a zither, which is struck in mysteriously ringing dissonant chords creating mysterious waves of metallic resonant and saturated tones. The zither is accompanied by what sounds like a mixture of organ drone and a heavily manipulated tape recording of sung (male) vocals. Relating it to the river landscape, zithering feels a sonic image of what could be a mysterious creature lurking in the river water or a strange brown colouration appearing in the river like subtly waving wheat being visible in the water through the mist of the river landscape. Similar to feel it out walk in, the ringing zither chords could also be interpreted as the waves in the river itself, with the water being disturbed by either of the unknown mysterious images appearing in the subconscious. zithering’s finale of unsettling zither dissonances backed by cello drone appears to suggest an imminent threat appearing in the water, the creature is rising up out of the water, the quiet gets disturbed, an unknown being has finally woken up with the church bells on the field recording of a busy street ringing notifying us of danger. Surreal imagery which keeps enriching the ever progressive compositional sonic palette of Visionary Hours on this album. Afterwards time keeps me in her shadow gives us some relief through its warm stream of melodic sound which in this case is at its source, a great moving loop of a string quartet melody. The melody loop is manipulated using the now familiar filter and delay effects, bringing us back to the Dub Techno influenced liquid resonances from earlier on the album but now bringing out additional melodic elements that are quite entrancing too. Like a tranquil journey in a rowing boat through the river landscape the warmly flowing melodies envelope is in ultimate peace and introspection but in a subtly changing manner as the piece falls back into a very slow fade-out nearing its finale. Indeed the way the music is built like this seems to suggest certain pleasant memories which are expressed by the melody loop, whilst the filter resonance melodies form the blurry surroundings of the “real” world our mind has drifted out of, still rippling around us. As the music fades, the ever increasing rippling effect and subtle tape artifacts make me think of the fragility of the mind, how we sometimes struggle to keep all details and the feelings of certain moments in life in our minds. still at the point then follows, continuing in the strings based Modern Classical style that the last three tracks of Coalescence of Form follow. It’s a relatively drone-like piece of music in which layers of synth, guitar and strings glisten like the glimmering diffuse yellow-orange spots of reflected sunlight on the river as the sun is slowly setting. The glowing and quite overwhelming richly vibrant drone of still at the point seems to describe the mighty power, warmth and wholesome energy the sun brings to the nature in the river landscape, subtly hissy string noises add an organic element of the movement of the water to the glowing soundscape and the Trip Hop like reverberated drums that enter in the second half add a curious drive to the music that creates a lovely semi-climax to the piece, very nice. After a short transitionary silence we move to the final piece musically discreet which does make the album come full circle in a great way. Continuing on from the previous piece in a drone-like manner, musically discreet flows through various phases, which feels like a sonic painting of the river landscape by compiling all impressions we had before into a kind of meditational state of mind through the softly “rocking” movement of the warm melodies performed on strings, guitar, synth and organ. It starts of in a quite glowing manner, depicting rays of sunlight shining throughout the river landscape but as the rippling chorus effected organ fades more into the foreground, hissy saturated resonances enter the image, presumably also originating from an organ depicting the mysterious plants growing within the river as well as the strangely rippling river water itself. As the sharp resonances become louder, a centre panned cello drone adds a great bass and textural details to the soundscape. Indeed the panning in this piece is greatly executed with the aforementioned cello slowly emerging out of the centre of the stereo image while the saturated resonances that also feature the recognisable filtered Dub styled delays move fluid between the sides of the stereo image. All in all a great closing piece. Before I conclude this review I obviously have to point out that Ian Hawgood’s work on mastering this album definitely helped bring out a lot of the saturated and melodic resonances within the 7 pieces as well as enhancing the full sound and dynamics of the album and giving it a nice bit of edge too around the high frequencies at some points. Taylor Lovelock’s cover artwork is also very fitting now that I’ve explained the river landscape interpretation as you can get a similar mysterious river vibe from the nicely edited grayscale rippling river photograph you can see there. I award this album a Polar Vision in the wavelength of a mysterious misty and at times grey river landscape that carries a lot of introspection, curious imagery but also a tranquil ambience. Coalescence of Form is a recommended listen for fans of the more experimental side of Ambient and Modern Classical music as well as Drone lovers and fans of immersive and cinematic ambience in their music, definitely check this out.
You can get Coalescence of Form in Regular, Deluxe Edition CD and download format from the Hidden Vibes Bandcamp page here: https://hiddenvibes.bandcamp.com/album/coalescence-of-form
