Aural Aggravation

Prohibited Records – 27th October 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

The… the… you know? Clicking fingers, gesticulating, waving hands in a rolling motion around your ears. The… thing? The… you know? The thing? The thing!

We’ve all been there. It’s on the tip of your tongue, the fringes of your memory. It hangs like a shadow, a fraction beyond the reach of the active brain. You curse your mind because you know it, and your interlocutor would, too, if only they had a clue what you were on about. The thing. The fucking thing.

The very prospect of reviewing Shane Aspergen’s EP flung me into a spin , because the title tossed me into the frantic headspace in which words run out and everything feels overwhelming, and it’s all down to the title. Because… well, that’s the thing. What is the thing? And how do you even begin to describe it?

This EP, we’re told, ‘comes as a precursor to a forthcoming album (tentatively titled Emblems of Transmuting Heat) that was finished a few months prior to the conceptualization of this four-track EP. While recent in its development, the music originates from the same period of transition, during which Shane Aspegren relocated from Hong Kong to Los Angeles.’

It feels like the sonic articulation of transition, of movement, and it feels transitory, ephemeral, fleeting moments, some of which leave an indelible imprint, others which fade instantly or barely even register in the moment. Precisely how or why this is, it’s hard to pinpoint with any kind of exactitude. But then, that feels like the point: the pieces are impressionistic sound collages. It’s a molecular morass of clamorous, scrabbling treble and scratching insectoid busyness and bubbling synthines which dissolves in a fuzzy hum and clatter; a cross of Gregorian chant, ambient, experimental electronica, and dance.

Aspegren explains how the title track ‘is a complete reworking of a different piece [he] started in 2022. “I completely abandoned the original in its initial form — the raw vocalizations were the only thing that I wanted to keep when I went back to revisit those sessions. The voices were recorded as a form of cathartic release during a period of time that I was heavily exploring voice and frequency as a form of somatic connection and release. In the end, this morphed through several different iterations, and finally turned into this version more than a year later, after moving to LA.” The sense of movement here is one of a forward propulsion, which comes largely from the subtle but insistent beat.

‘Imaginal Pathway’ is but a brief interlude, as was intended, penned as an interlude for the Imaginal Pathways app for which Aspegren was the lead artist. It’s a mere minute and a half – of eddying ambience layered with light, hovering drones which bends and droop amidst birdlike tweets, over which a narrative – seemingly lifted straight from an education video – explains the workings of the ear, a ‘magical’ organ ‘which transports perceptual vibrations from the physical realm into the experiential’.

The final track, ‘iTiS’, is the most recent composition, which came about following his relocation, with Aspegren recounting “It started with a Moog Subharmonicon improvisation and turned into a slow build of layers and structure. Strangely, it feels like the oldest track to me… like I made it in another era of my life.”. It certainly sounds like music from another era, too, the contemporary kit very much harking back to more vintage analogue sound. There’s a soft, squelchiness to the bass tones, a blurring edge to the broad space-filling sweeps. But perhaps sometimes the equipment determines the mood and the sound more than the creator. Either way, it makes for a fitting close to the EP – for having brought the listener through a journey of upheaval, of uncertainty, of feeling unsettled, it ends with what feels like a sense of final settlement, of resolution. And end, but also a new vista, and the possibility of a new beginning.

AA