FOX, ROBIN - Threnody To Now

"Robin Fox's work with frequency is a thing of wonder. Between his renowned pieces for laser and his extensive dance commissions, he has been responsible for creating a series of powerful electronic music works that exist equally between digital and analog realms. On Threnody To Now, Fox uses sound to meditate on affect and its manifestations in modern living. Deeply intuitive and iterative pieces, both these compositions dwell in harmony, folding and unfolding across a mesh of slow-release envelopes and low frequency oscillation. They both set up a self-contained spectrum, contoured in a sonic language that is personal and ultimately summarizes what comes in the wake one of the most curious moments of our age. A note from Robin Fox: "Everybody, it seems, lives their own personal apocalypse. It's inevitable. Built into the arc of our mortal time on earth is the inescapable feeling that we live right on the edge of the end of the world as we know it. It is all part and parcel of each unit of human consciousness assuming it is the center of everything. Try as I might to avoid catastrophic thinking there is a creeping sense of dread and unease making its way into my mind right now and it made its way into these pieces too. Both tracks on this release are linear takes recorded on my studio Eurorack modular system. They are different patches on different days -- but they feel related. Both sessions started with a desire to explore the harmonic series with patience and make something vast. What emerged where two epic pieces that seemed to tap into a sadness and disconnection that was gripping the city and my mind at that time. Listen to these tracks at a time when the light is changing. The liminal times of dawn and dusk or that moment when the sun emerges from behind a bank of dark clouds. While a threnody is a lament there is hope in the rising harmonic phrases too. A sense that we may yet emerge from this period better than we were. We must be better than we were. Always." - Room40.