Oliver Coates - Throb, Shiver, Arrow of Time

Late to the game as it is, I've no shame in admitting I truly became an Oliver Coates convert after hearing his soundtrack work for Aftersun, a deeply resonant display of minimalism that played with notions of time and memory that astutely reflected the film's devastating emotional arc (and a warning for the uninitiated: if you've any unaddressed trauma around parental relationships, be careful how you approach it). Of course, Coates didn't appear out of nowhere with a score for one of the most lauded British films in recent history, and indeed, Throb, shiver, arrow of time is his third record for RVNG, and can't be far off his tenth overall. Still, Aftersun does feel like a creative Rubicon of sorts for the cellist/producer/composer, the time-dilated exploration of the relationship between memory and sound central to that film further played out in his increasingly narrative-driven music. Though almost entirely wordless, these a sense of storytelling at the heart of these ten compositions that's captured in the deft phrasing, subtle sense of drama and ambient spacing. The specific story being told might not be literally discernible, but the feeling is rife, heavy with pathos, absolutely sad, but also pretty and strangely hopeful - call it the new sincerity of ambient-adjacent/modern composition, the kind i think was best introduced to the world via PAN's pivotal Mono No Aware compilation, and it's no surprise one of the stars of that collection, Malibu, also guests here. Because Coates is a cellist first, comparisons to Arthur Russell are perhaps inevitable, and while I don't think they especially sound like one another here (remembering of course that there are many versions of Arthur), there's a shared interest in THE emotional possibilities of sonic exploration.And that's about the highest praise I can muster.