A Closer Listen
Here’s a concept album this really works, packaged in a neat little box set housing two tapes and showcasing incredible art from Djoïna Amrani. We’re not sure just how strong the box is, but we wonder if it might survive a climate apocalypse and be unearthed by future generations, who ponder how to play it, like Tom Petty in You Got Lucky.
Music of the Terrazoku: Ethnographic Recordings From An Imagined Future is the brainchild of drummer-composer Will Glaser, who has assembled a wide array of experimental musicians to help him execute his vision. There’s pretty much everything here, from ambience to industrial music, free improv to early 20th-century jazz. The idea is that such musicians have lived through a climactic event that has wiped away all reference points, and are recreating music from scratch, a metaphor for rebuilding a fractured society.
The very first sounds are like a Geiger counter and a human playing on found containers before breaking into an array of junk drums: just what one might expect for the re-origins of music. Isn’t this how our primitive ancestors started? A dark drone descends like a cloud of radioactive dust, sending everyone scurrying for shelter. The opening title, “Then It Wasn’t,” serves as a warning: climate change seems to happen slowly, until it leaps. If one were only able to play outside for short periods of time, would one still play? Then the rain begins to fall, but what kind of rain?
Glaser’s future is solemn, but at times hopeful. On the first cassette, one may draw a narrative line from “Sunshower” to “Only the Rain” to “Only the Wind” to “When the Clouds Pass.” The first piece includes an uplifting choir, and at the end, the birds begin to sing, so one can be grateful that some have survived. The percussion imitates a church bell: a new brand of holiness, grounded in what is left of nature. By “Only the Rain,” the percussion is like metal sheets, honoring Harry Bertoia.
The bass clarinet introduces a period of abstract reflection. Could we have prevented this? (Yes.) Are we still able to rebuild? (Perhaps.) Can music lead the way? (Why not?) “Howl” may or may not have been inspired by Ginsberg, but if so, it fits: this is the voice of reinvention. “Wrath” may refer to the wrath of the Earth, the wrath of God, or the fire of anger that coils in plain sight, ready to explode in the second half.
The purple cassette is a different beast. Tribal percussion erupts in the opening seconds, as if a new civilization has formed. And then the “Bees” arrive, buzzing in what one perceives to be an angry fashion. Suddenly an industrial, electronic beat emerges, and the view shifts to a gleaming sci-fi future. Has somebody found a way to relaunch the power stations? Or are insectoid aliens sifting through the wreckage of humanity? Either way, all bets are off as to what timbre is next. The synthetic “Pylon” brushes the arm of IDM before lowering into a pit of teeming drone; and then all hell breaks loose.
As one might guess from the title, “There’s Shit in the River” releases all of the album’s pent-up aggression with righteous indignation, swearing and primal screams. It’s hard to listen to this piece, but it’s essential for the understanding of the album. This is not a gentle post-apocalypse. After the energy is spent, one can hear the “Tides,” reclaiming their own, the water rising to near-primordial levels. Then the opposite of a fairy tale, “Another Disenchanted Forest,” the realization of what humanity has done finally sinking in. Glaser returns to gentle percussion as the sounds of the forest unfold around him. Closing piece “Dedicated to All Living Beings Who Suffer” declares, “behind the truth are other truths,” and references the book of Genesis on its way to describing the “pain of a thousand cuts, pain of losing one’s soul” before the strings enter to offer a final elegy.
“How many tears are needed to provoke another’s tears of sympathy?” The question hangs in the ether as the heavenly, wordless vocals return one final, pleading time. How close is this imagined future to becoming real? (Richard Allen)
Wed Oct 22 00:01:14 GMT 2025