Asher - the depths, the colors, the objects & the silence

Mystery Sea
MS39

I’ve written about Asher Thal-nir’s music several times over the last couple of years, with some enthusiasm, but his remains a name I don’t hear pop up with much regularity on the new music scene. What’s a critic to do? Well, I guess just to keep pounding home the notion that he’s someone to listen to, an artist who consistently creates enjoyable, stimulating and probing work.

His most recent (issued in a batch of 100 to take advantage of the undoubted groundswell of support this review will occasion) might be my favorite work of his to date. Three longish pieces, each drawing on a similar mode of construction but each of a subtly different hue. As near as I can tell, the underlying sounds here derive from field recordings though I get the impression that physical markings and disturbances on the tape itself also play a part. Superficially almost featureless, they in fact contain all the hundreds of details you’d find on a “blank” wall, or simply on a recording of a quiet, semi-urban backyard. Whatever their origin, they seem to have been chosen carefully (or carefully uncarefully) to transmit a granular calm, relatively untroubled but with an anticipatory edge lurking just below the surface. Voices and traffic noises peek through here and there though generally one is only aware of a kind of background hum, the low buzz of the modern environment. Over and through these tapes, Asher layers vaporous washes of semi-tonal electronic sound of long duration, pulsing very slowly. On the last track, it seems he’s only adding a faint bell, which is exactly enough. The pieces unspool in no hurry, filling the temporal interstices like a gas.

Lovely, contemplative work, even better than looking and listening out your back window.

mystery sea