Coming to us today by way of Paris, France is an obscure project by the name of Dever To Laye. As I’ve often said in reviews on the blog, maybe it’s a good thing that we don’t have a lot of context to go by. That way, we can just let the music speak for itself.
Dever To Laye brings us their new four-track release, ‘INIT’. A couple of the tracks are about eight and ten minutes in length and the other two are over ten minutes each. This leads me to believe, in a way that the artist has designed the album as representing a story in diiferent chapters – sometimes longer, sometimes shorter depending on the scenes.
What’s interesting about these tracks is that they all begin with what sounds a bit like old analog keyboard blips. Maybe I’m wrong. In any case, they are intentional and are in patterns that repeat throughout the tracks. I have a feeling this artist was maybe influenced by the likes of Kraftwerk as well as some older ambient artists like Roach, Eno or even Vangelis.
Anyway, here’s where it gets even more interesting and where the artist’s strength starts to shine, the tracks all have this tendency of creating a great “build-up” as the ambient layers come over one by one increasing in thickness and dare I say a somber and emotional intensity. For some reason, it seems to work on top of the repeated parts that started in the beginning. The atmosphere almost creates a feeling of nostalgia on a cloudy day with storms imminent, perhaps by the oceanside. But maybe that’s my imagination. In any case, the layering and build up are really where the artist’s strengtths are.
What I would love to hear next is the artist create an exclusively ambient exploration maybe with just the ethereal keyboard layers. It’s a great release and a good intro to the artist without much context to divert our attention to. ‘INIT’ is straight to the point and effective. Perhaps the next chapter we might learn more with a story behind the album. Whatever it will be, it should be interesting in any case.
https://devertolaye.bandcamp.com/album/i-n-i-t-2
