Transcendental Experimental: Imperfect, Impermanent, Incomplete
Cross Record’s latest project Wabi-Sabi is marked with transcendental sonic nuances that land on your hair follicles like honey droplets and drip softly and tantalizingly onto your skin before squeezing inside of your pores like an unwilling murky ecstasy. Technically speaking, the phrase wabi-sabi is a Japanese worldview that represents imperfection, impermanence, and incompletion – adjectives that encapsulate the essence of this concept album. If that shit just got too weird for you, let’s call this disc a trippy, bittersweet journey.
First track, “The Curtains Part,” is the perfect example of this eerie sweetness, beginning with a discordant undercurrent but driven by floating gossamer vocals. A guitar wail screams underneath while symphonic strings rise like untethered smoke. The sonic texture turns into a soft steamy smolder, billowing slowly until it’s out of sight, out of mind. “Two Rings” then enters like a funeral hymn before some subtle xylo-hits add a solid rhythmic base. The vocals begin with a decidedly tormented edge. “Two rings made of gold. My friend made them. One to have and one to hold.” This is going to end badly. The song then slips into an unbalanced otherworldly state.
Bittersweet memories surface in “Steady Waves,” which has a soothing balance of sweetness and sadness. The guitar and bass create a dark instrumental haven slightly reminiscent of Daughter. “I let my soul sink into a warm blanket,” perfectly encapsulates the vibes of this track. In next song “High Rise,” the words “I watched the sun rise. It rises in my eyes,” are sung desolately, but the following, repeated line, “So I rise,” gives a subtle yet powerful glimpse of hope in a two-and-a-half-minute segment.
My favorite title on the disc is definitely “Something Unseen Touches A Flower To My Forehead,” which nurtures a happier, speedier guitar underneath the familiar saccharine vocals. The drums dominate but don’t overpower, fading in key moments to reveal something ethereal and almost magical. It’s like a fairy singing a folktale through the mist. “Basket” has a faded sense of whimsy, yet something wicked this way comes with the uncomfortable instrumental base that collides like an emerging storm. The thunder crashes at the end before fading into a soft rain.
The title, “Wasp in a Jar,” provides fitting imagery for the following track, which involves layers of dark guitar chords, hopeless harmonizing vocals, dismal percussion, and a suddenly appearing tormented rumble. Final song, “Lemon,” begins like a soft radar warning, which shifts a few keys throughout to give perspective, all the while letting the airy vocals float over with a sense of abandonment or escape, depending on which way that perspective leans you.
Leave a Comment