Cassette
All topography is temporary. Even a horizon will eventually change — and so we cling to what we can to stay afloat in a world that churns like the ocean, seeking the through lines between past and present. Something to anchor us to the ever changing moment. Memories as life rafts, assembled from the detritus of what once was. A piece of the familiar to carry us towards the unknown.
Following on the sepia toned, dusty attic glow of 2024’s Tiki, Derek White’s III offers a further glimpse into his personal world within a world. A space outside of time. The warm refuge of a childhood blanket fort, where memories are draped in patchwork assemblage and the light of the outside arrives subdued, and yet still reaching ever towards the shadowed corners of the mind’s inner landscape. Wielded with a crate diggers reverence for audio excavation, samples sourced from old jazz, soul and folk records are stretched and molded like clay, their forms not something to be fully arrived at but rather knitted together in a constantly swirling tapestry of smoke; as if in response to a future that is uncertain and a present that must still be tended to.
While at times disorienting and downright hallucinatory — from the swamp gas murk of "shower in the dark" to the chopped and screwed electroacoustics of "bohanon" — III offers just as many moments of utterly arresting beauty and introspection; "i left the radio out in the rain again" and "sump" both bringing a distinct front porch at night sentimentalism reminiscent of peak era Kranky with guitars that slowly unfurl like curtains of fog. On "sleep aid (2073)", Memotone’s William Yates’ unmistakable fourth world clarinet croons achingly over a bed of percolating texture, as if the corporeal and organic are attempting to stretch roots towards the spirit realm.
At the centre of III’s subtle and introspective genius is the unshakeable sense of an artist who understands the importance of listening as a crucial part of his craft, every bit as important as the actual creation in and of itself. Like an anthropological study in sound, III is a work that reaches back in history in order to find a way forward. It asks us what kind of world we would like to live in, and reminds us that sometimes the best way to build something new and beautiful is with the remnants of our ever crumbling past.
