Otherworld - I Had Forgotten How Much Light There (2020)

Otherworld presents: I Had Forgotten How Much Light There Was In The World Till You Gave It Back To Me
Otherworld is an alias of Glasgow musician Helena Celle, who since releasing her Night School debut If I Can't Handle Me At My Best, You Don't Deserve You At Your Worst has been developing her soundworld using more aleatory factors, diverse sample sources and live processing techniques, mostly evidenced on releases on her own Outlet Archival imprint. While her previous Night School release soundtracked the dilapidation of hardware, the breaking down of rigid techno systems and beats, with Otherworld the aesthetic is blown out and heady, with structures harder to pin down, the listener adrift in a preternatural netherworld of emotional states and fried sonics.
For "I Had Forgotten..." Otherworld manifests 7 revolving, loop-based drone-adjascent pieces that operate as dips into the separate universes of each track. With extensive use of reverb and delay it would be easy to categorize the music as "ambient" but these are aids for deep listening. Taking the album title from Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea series, each piece glows with its own logic and resonance, with the temporal time span afforded here offering glimpses into streams of sound rather than conclusive, set pieces. Each track evolves slowly, crawling through the air on its own tread. Maledithewg breathes into life with a looping synthised noise overlayed with frayed pads, while on Delagmhiewt there's a heavily processed, low resonant instrument that resembles Coil playing fast and loose with a digi-didgeridoo. Some tracks seem to hold steady in stasis, threatening to burble over with low-end distortion, seemingly retiscent in their unfurling. At its most evovled, as on the longer piece Lathedgewim, there's a nod to 80s Eno perhaps, with synth elements and drone embers wafting across the stereofield revealing new shades of light and darkness.