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Album Info
Release Date: 2021-12-03Label: Cruel Nature Records
Edition of 40The Frequency of the Heart at Rest uses a custom tuning system (based upon multiplications of the frequency of the human heart whilst sleeping) to construct a dense, enigmatic sound world. Modular synthesis, alongside violins, trumpets, and percussion, are processed through reels of analogue tape, the speed of their playback on the tape adjusted in order to match the works bespoke tuning system. Parts have been re-recorded several times over, their distinct tonalities bleeding into one another to create a unified, claustrophobic sonic tapestry.
Drawn from the composers own battles with extreme sleep loss – waking as often as every 15 minutes throughout the night for a period of almost 3 years - the work encapsulates the haze of the perpetual tired. Snatches of pleasant, nostalgic melodies filter through a wall of grit and noise, the result of the repeated over-dubbing of reels, an increasingly worn tape medium burying whatever clarity there might once have been in an endless wash of artifacts and decay.
Merging minimal neo-classicism with drone, minimal electronica, noise, glitch and sound design, the album offers a tense and fragile journey through a disparate, impoverished landscape, the soundtrack invoking a sensory world always on the brink of collapse.