A Soothing Walk

 

"This record is dedicated to all those humans, animals and elements that flow around me; no matter the distance, no matter the time. They all shape who I am and the way I listen" - Jason Kolàr

Spanish-born electronic musician Jason Kolàr isn't the worst idea to chase away the remnants of the Sunday evening blues on Monday morning. Basically, every day should be accepted as a gift, we all know that without having to read a work life balance guide. But despite a few wounds that everyone probably carries with them and that don't get less the higher the number on the birthday cake gets, everyday life always tries to entangle us in the banalities of life with its nasty little games and tricks.

At least for me, it is always an enormous effort and a major life task to oppose this. Well, there are ways and means. A good social network is probably the silver bullet. Music is just as big a help. 

Again and again.

And so “Liquid Rhythm” is equipped with everything that makes a Monday seem like a Friday. Listen to “Trigger” and you will find happiness in the here and now. But highlighting individual tracks would be unfair. The 40 minutes of life advice are well spent here.

„ With its minimal tracks aimed at a light-hearted listening experience, »Liquid Rhythm« docks straight onto the genre of Japanese environmental music. Even the opener Bells could have taken place at the same time as milestones in the genre like Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Green. Magic Random Exotism as the second track dabs even more deliberately in the colour palette of Kankyō Ongaku with its reverberating strokes. Mere referencing, however, doesn’t quite do justice to Jason Kolàr’s third album, which, like its predecessor from last year, Loops and Pieces (2017-2020), is released on the Belgian label Dauw. I Have No Idea, for example, despite being introspective, features a lively rhythm guitar that steals the show from the synthetic timbres omnipresent on pretty much every track. The title track, by contrast, allows the playful strokes to overlap, weaving a new-age hammock into which A Soothing Walk, despite its name, forces itself upon the listener even more decisively. Chimes and synths that appear almost arbitrarily at irregular intervals strive to dissolve any puritanical demands placed on structure and rules. Free drifting is the motto that promises the most for Spain based Jason Kolàr. And the album obeys, clearly becoming more experimental in the second half, but not losing sight of the meditative beauty it seeks over the entire distance. By the way, according to the press release, all the sounds come from Kolàr’s machines, except for Joan Serinyà’s double bass on Trigger and Avoiding The Obvious, which bestows an earthly face on the first of the two tracks in particular.

-HHV Mag-

„ Boutique Belgian imprint Dauw prepare to release ‘Liquid Rhythm‘, a new album from Jason Kolar who released his ‘Modified Perspectives‘ LP via the ever-essential Stroom in 2018.

‘Liquid Rhythm‘ follows a collection of previously unreleased works released on Dauw via cassette in June 2021, but as enjoyable as these pieces were, ‘Liquid Rhythm‘ stands as a more constructed body of work, sonically rendering the title’s poetic nature in cascading bells and soothing sweeps of synth-work across 10 unique but similar tracks.

There’s a very organic and analogue sound present across the album, a familiar touch to those interested in the likes of Midori Takada’s „Through The Looking Glass“ — and who isn’t counted among that number? Importantly, Kolàr spares us Western fetishisation of the so called ‘Japanese Ambient‘, giving us a personal and unique derivation that straddles modern and ancient techniques.

‘Avoiding the Obvious‘ comes towards the close of the album, a point at which the listener is already well-submerged in peacable tones. The pace is unhurried, and the sounds slowly emerge, almost shy. It’s almost as if the listener is caught between two separate performances; harp strings tumble gently in a loose synchronisation to the billowing winds of the synth.

-inverted Audio-