Where last year’s Kontrapoetik was furious and direct, Epistasis is passionate and exploratory, structured like an ouroboros that in completing its form comes to both an end and a beginning. One depends on the other, the circularity of this mythical figure not so much an instance of unmoving things but of action and reaction, chains of effects whose relationships are anything but linear.

The “Interlocked Cycles” – the first and last tracks in the album – are thus the setup and the finale, a loop in which every instrument and every note aims for the subtle dissolution of the straight musical line. Like the snow in the cover, an almost White on White composition, the players lay down sheet after sheet of tones that, even when conforming clearly cut sequences, feels like staring into the sky. There’s a certain intensity to it, gazing into something too vast to apprehend, but…

Gizeh Records – 15th March 2019

has graced the virtual pages of Aural Aggravation on a number of occasions, and has been on my radar for a while. Here, she comprises one half of newly-founded Snowdrops, a France-based keyboard duo formed with Mathieu Gabry.

With Yann Tiersen, Tindersticks, Foudre!… as resumé namedrops, the pair have pedigree. Snowdrops is a soundtrack work, composed for Phuttiphong Aroonpheng’s film of the same name, which has won several awards including Best Film in the Orizzonti section at the Venice Film Festival.

The press release explains that ‘the Thai film trains a poetic look at the void of humanity through the story of two men, a Thai fisherman with peroxide blonde hair and a nameless stranger stuck in a foreign land and supposed to be a Rohingya of Myanmar, whose continuing persecution is constituting one of the biggest human rights scandals of our time’. And…