Adhelm - Yasam Rose (2020) Hi-Res

Adhelm’s compositions investigate the spaces where insistent nature and bleak urbanity meet. The result is a compelling admixture of resonant percussion, processed field recordings and spectral electronics. His adventurous compositional processes and experiments echo musique concrète, Cageian indeterminacy and the deep listening ethos of Pauline Oliveros.

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This album comprises two pieces inspired by T. S. Eliot’s The Dry Salvages.

Yasam Rose imagines a day-in-the-life of the vessel of the same name that works along the lesser known part of the Thames. The ship sits small and alone in the river it traverses, occasionally kissing the vast banks which stir with trade and gossip. Navigating murky and muscular currents, it surveys the bleak flat landscapes scarified by dense clusters of industry. From wider waters, where sea-faring ships sit so tall they dwarf even the Yasam Rose, it travels upriver where scatters of Wren’s London echo from the banks. A passage through rain thick with traces from a metropolis forgetting its bucolic past.

Spek explores East London’s once dense and thriving industry as it recedes into the Thames’ estuary. Still kinetic with trade, some areas lie defunct and dilapidated as nature strives to claim them back. Spek is red with rust and spattered by the sludge of low tide. Wind-swept, battered and cold, the machine of industry fights on as nature howls, whirls and lashes against it.

--Beni Giles [a.k.a Adhelm]