How best to review the latest release by a highly productive artist who has released groundbreaking stuff in his own genre and who is – rightfully so – praised beyond recognition? Best stick to rule number one – stick to the release itself! Okay, so this is the review for SaffronKeira‘s new record The Faded Orbit.
First of – don’t let yourself be fooled: in orbit you can’t hear no sound because soundwaves need gravity and where there’s no gravity there can thus be no sound. Thus the record title is a bit misleading. But when imagining watching an orbit fade from within a spaceship or -station, there one of course can feel the sound of the crashing and collapsing of that orbit. The weight and pressure will surely ripple out into one’s position at the time. So that is how one will hear a “Faded Orbit” - but what would one hear when listening closely?
The walls of the ship shaking under the gravity collapsing and thus creating an enormous pull-effect. You can hear those highly industrial sounds all the time on SaffronKeira‘s new record the ambient drones have a certain rippling effect as if one is watching a wall that is flowing back and forth under the might waves of gravity we couldn’t hear outside.
Another sound our mind might imagine and thus play a trick on us is the sound of light (which basically it doesn’t have) – another image would be the bright beams of heavenly arranged ambient parts slowly creeping up and through our eardrums. Combined with the sometimes deep bass (for example in the final track ”Sanguineus” this makes for a very atmospheric listen. As if we were watching a sun collapse, fold into a single pinpoint of energy and then that point dropping low without really making a consciously witnessable sound. One we see and for which our mind procures a mental sound image. Like watching lightning far away and then providing oneself with the accompanying thunder for only then one’s notion of that lightning is complete.
The six tracks with a running time of roughly 34 minutes are once again published by one of Europe’s leading labels for sounds from space and beyond the observable – Denovali. For nearly ten years now, SaffronKeira from the Italian island of Sardinia has been one of the many strongholds of the label with his arms reaching out into many genres. With a background in techno this artist has developed his own signature sound floating between ambient, drone and field recordings; oftentimes accompanied by a guest musician to add some more layers of sound to his own creations. Siavash Amini is that companion on The Faded Orbit whose cover reminds one a lot of My Bloody Valentine’s masterpiece Loveless. SaffronKeira’s record can, in a way, be compared to said shoegaze-masterpiece because of its all-encompassing wall of ambient sound. One cannot stay away from the songs and it is hard to pick out the best ones as the record has this typical SaffronKeira-flow. Give yourself to it and enjoy it. There are many wonderful little details here, for example on which track is the collapsing piano?
