ALEX SMALLEY - Patterns

How long must one wait before music reaches its finished form, assuming such a thing even exists? It's a puzzle with no easy solution, one that "Patterns" attempts to answer across seven constantly shifting tracks. Over the years, Alex Smalley has carved out a solid reputation within the British drone scene, first alongside Svitlana Samoylenko under the moniker Olan Mill, then as the driving force behind Pausal alongside his friend Simon Bainton, with whom he toured Europe supporting Mountains, Stars Of The Lid, Greg Haines and Chihei Hatakeyama. Lucia Adam, on the other hand, is a classically trained Moldovan pianist who has long lived and worked in Weimar, Germany. Their paths crossed in 2017, when Smalley chose to leave Hampshire and relocate permanently with his family to that same Thuringian town. The two subsequently decided to join forces and give life to a highly evocative project born from two radically different personalities.

The material that forms the backbone of "Patterns" isn't entirely new, though: it mostly consists of reworkings of tracks composed in 2019 and already released by Fluid Audio on a limited-edition CD-R titled "Gaya". Back then they went by the name "Ilm"; now they've simply chosen their real names to sign a record whose genesis went through several evolutions before reaching its final form. Shadowy cones, altered perceptions and irregular visions: we're in the dark, elusive territory of modern ambient music, and as with many of their peers, pandemic-induced semi-isolation turned into a laboratory of ideas with a window onto the cosmos, where sounds are analyzed and restructured from every possible angle.

The opening track, "Tides", mirrors Smalley's free-flowing spirituality, his love of nature and the primal need for connection with the elements, with notes evaporating over delicate landscapes swept by the wind, while the cryptic "As Above As Below" brings in chiming tones suggesting a tender sense of bliss; originally the piece stayed in darker tonalities, but after an ascetic and illuminating trip to Myanmar it was reshaped into something more optimistic.

The universe never stops expanding: "Wave Shapes" is the chaos that generates order, "Violet Fields" is the hope of awakening and the wonder of blooming, "Growing Layers" punctuates chords over unconventional patterns. Also worth hearing are "Gaia" and the graceful "Eclipse", where Alex paints free-flowing layers over which Lucia embroiders imperceptible, dreamlike piano flights. Overall, it's an excellent existential collage, as evanescent and illusory as the act of creation itself.

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15/09/2022