Things Fall Apart – Nathan Amundson (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Music and literature are my twin passions, so it is always great when the two occupy the same space for me. Not only is Nathan Amundson‘s latest album named after Chinua Achebe‘s masterful debut novel, but it also features a track named after my favourite author of recent times, Haruki Murakami. But how relevant the titles are to the music that bears their name is probably known only to the Amundson. The connection is perhaps too personal to be conveyed through this lyricless music.

So it is perhaps for each listener to find their own meaning in these glacial-paced and droning textures, the dark ambience, and the floating finesse, but like all instrumentals, the music can, rather than dragging all listeners to the same conclusion through the enforced meaning of words, have a separate musical conversation with each.

‘Ujaayi’ feels like the background hum of a cavernous place or the distant echo of the Big Bang through deep space, formless and floating yet beguilingly beautiful in its meditative and minimalist way. ‘We’ll Be the Last Ones Here’ expands the sonic palette, grinding guitars and raw resonant part-riffs cutting through the previous ambient-scapes, a blend of the gritty and the graceful, the sonorous and the serene.

‘Solo Piano’ blends the classical delicacy of this iconic instrument with cacophonous spikes; ‘Kenton’ feels like a field recording at a firework display, or perhaps something more troubling as distant explosions echo into almost-music and the title track plays us out as we came in, with the drone-hum of a single sound that changes almost imperceptibly in tone and texture to create its delicate musicality.

Recorded over a long period, with little intention of ever collecting them together on an album, they do form an intriguing musical arc as they blend an echo of the real world with manufactured noise-art. And with ambient music, field recordings, drone and found sounds, an ever-growing musical niche, the release of this collection couldn’t have been timed more perfectly.