i sometimes wonder whether i’ve come to prize obfuscation in music more than clarity. When things are unclear, things get interesting, the ear and mind work harder, there’s potentially something to be discovered. This is one of the primary aspects that i’ve been revelling in when spending time with Turkish musician Elif Yalvaç‘s latest release Vection. At just over 32 minutes’ duration, it’s not a lengthy album, but what goes on within its five tracks feels substantial and, at times, epic.
The intangibility of its sonics extends to the connotations bestowed on it by the titles of those tracks, intermingling evocations of space, mythology, perception, and sound. Telesto is named after one of Saturn’s moons and a Greek water-nymph. Theia is a hypothetical planet (which, colliding with Earth, may have created the Moon) and a Greek goddess, responsible for sight and vision. Quaoar (or, strictly speaking, 50000 Quaoar) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt and an alternate name for the mythological figure Chinigchinix, significant to the Mission Indian peoples. Vection picks up the thread pertaining to the goddess Theia and refers to the illusory perception of movement when the body is actually stationary. The remaining track is called Harmonicity, a more generalised title but one that directly implies some kind of sonic relationship. It’s within the boundless boundaries of this complex array of allusive references that Yalvaç’s soundworlds are created.
i spoke of those evocations as intermingling, and that extends to the relationship (harmonicity?) of the tracks to each other. To some extent, to say something about one of them is to say something about them all, as their individual traits and behaviour stem from what can be regarded as a shared modus operandi.
Perhaps the most obvious trait, heard in every track and one of the key elements that drives the obfuscatory / allusive aspect of the music, is resonance, the perception that what we’re hearing is reverberation emanating from some unclear source. In many ways it’s how Yalvaç harnesses this that makes the music as tantalising as it is, since while specific details are often scant, they are there. Or, at least, there’s the impression that they’re there, traces of tangibility that either the ear catches or the imagination conjures. But it’s not all smoke and mirrors, a procession of atmospheres and fug; Yalvaç makes sure that some sonic elements are clear in terms of presence, even if they’re unclear in terms of identity.
Take the title track, for example, in which a series of powerful deep waves pass across. My ears tell me there are traces or remnants of bells in there, but they could be a fantasy resulting from the complex vertical agglomerations of hanging notes. Here and there a specific pitch pushes through – high scrapes and low tollings – but with each surging wave it’s as if the palette is wiped clean, and identity remains at a distance. Only in the final couple of minutes do some focused elements come through, shimmering before our ears. Even more nebulous is Theia, the shortest track on the album, where that idea that we’re hearing the resonance rather than the source becomes paramount. Here, the reverb is modulated by various distorted protrusions at the periphery. Nothing makes it to the surface, though in the track’s latter stages the intensity becomes gentle, allowing some soft, rather ghostly, melodic definition to appear, struck from right and left by fuzzy impacts.
A crucial aspect of the shared qualities of these tracks – one of the defining features of Vection overall – is crowded spaces, Yalvaç filling her soundscapes with a welter of diverse elements. However, the resultant density never feels overcrowded; the soundstage isn’t saturated, and as such, the music remains accessible, overwhelming without becoming overpowering. The best example of this is opening track Telesto, which quickly grows from nascent notions of line and cluster into a dense pitch space with juddering foundations and high circling tones. There’s a beautiful sense of balance maintained throughout, that density being militated against by both stasis – the music often holds position for periods of time – as well as short reposes where things are momentarily more sparse. But there’s really no let-up, particularly later in the track when noise becomes an integral component in the midst of a host of repeating, turning, cycling and tilting ideas, the whole glowing and throbbing. (Apropos: this applies to all of Vection, but Telesto especially should be played loud.)
Those bells i thought i might have heard in Theia come back again in Harmonicity, again as an implied presence resulting from piled-up tones. Yalvaç dials down both the density and the movement here, and while a sense of nebulosity remains, the implications of the title can be heard in the way that sounds seem to be resonating in sympathy with each other. Indeed, harmony becomes increasingly important; halfway through, chime-like timbres can be made out within the texture, and shortly after strong pitches burn their way to the surface. The bass falls away, and within a seemingly hot environment (some notes appear to be buzzing in the imaginary heat) a delicate oscillation emerges: a French sixth falling to a dominant. They rock back and forth, a gorgeous teetering toward a cadence that never comes.
The album closes with Quaoar, which at nearly 11 minutes is by far the longest track. It’s not so much a synthesis of what’s gone before as an extended exploration and summation of Vection‘s key behavioural traits, turning away from the (in hindsight, startling) clarity of Harmonicity in favour of more elusive, resonance-swamped material. That being said, Yalvaç does introduce the most tangible sound objects so far, in the form of electronic blips and patterns that squiggle through the dense viscous vapours, becoming swallowed up in slow waves that float according to no discernible gravity. The stillness and the slowness of Quaoar set it apart from the preceding tracks, at times raising the question of passivity. As elsewhere, though, the poise and balance of the music indicate active oversight, in which the occasionally tangible motes lead to an engagement the tension of which balances with the ease in the music. It’s as close as Vection gets to ambient, pulling and pushing us toward and away from its arresting but elusive soundscape.
Released by Eliane Tapes, a sublabel of Moving Furniture Records, Vection is available on CD and download.
Goody – I do love me some Yalvaç…