Spyra - Invisible Fields
"Test Transmission," the first track of Spyra's Invisible Fields, scares me. I'm worked up because this isn't what I was expecting from the final act of a trilogy which Wolfram DER Spyra has been working on for FAX since 1998's sublime Sferics. The liner notes remind us that this project has been ostensibly about radio waves and other fascinating phenomena which we cannot see. Sferics was filled with ambient music wedded to atmospheric anomalies in the most gorgeous of fashions. So what's got me terrified about "Test Transmission"? It's a retro-80s dance floor beat with the Mr. Roboto voice sample.
Thank God it is only a momentary (well, four minute moment) nod to Kraftwerk and then Spyra moves along to his continued exploration of deft piano melodies, electromagnetic wave patterns, and fluid ambience. "Entropy Is Just..." is disturbed by weather patterns (which sound as if they've been lifted from Blade Runner) as a gentle melody hums along a watery percussion section which sounds like has been sourced from shortwave static. The piano-like melody is augmented by vibraphone as if Karl Berger has such a good time making Polytime (another wonderful FAX record from 1998) that he's come by for another collaborative effort. A radical shift in tempo and style sweep past us at the end -- a sudden drop as if you were on an elevator and it randomly plummeted six floors in free fall before returning to its regulated pace -- before the second part of the jazz-tinged excursion gets underway. "...A Seven Letter Word" merges the jazz odyssey of "Entropy Is Just..." with revisited melodies from Sferics -- a variation of themes already explored.
"XyloCity Part 1" and "XyloCity Part 2" continue the polyrhythmic motion of the earlier tracks, locking into the groove which will define the album: future jazz imbued with a vibrating organic warmth -- a collision of wood and rubber and electronic pulses. Throughout the persistence of electromagnetic signals continues, whether it be rumbling static drifting past or shortwave pops which seem to be snared by the rhythm of the piece and drawn into the orbit of the music.
"Bath," the 24 minute centerpiece of Invisible Fields summarizes all the types of invisible waveforms which permeate our cities, our buildings, and our lives. Surrounded by thunder, unattended radios tuned to forgotten stations and the persistent tock-tock of a wind-up clock, "Bath" is a soundtrack aching to be wrapped around a short film. If Ridley Scott ever wanted to revisit the water-drenched and artificially luminous world of Blade Runner, he would only need "Bath" to act as his aural screenplay. The beauty of "Bath" is that it allows me to dream of a reality where a movie studio was brave enough to allow Ridley Scott to make a 24 minute film set only to music.
Finally, the delicate piano outro of "Temporarily Not Available." Much like the last track of Sferics, "Temporarily Not Available" seems as if the ghost of Erik Satie is haunting an abandoned piano. For the last hour, Spyra has inviegled the listener with his seductive sound work. He has shared his fascination with the shortwave, the radio wave, the microwave, the sine wave and the atmospheric wave; he has built music around each of these phenomena and caught our attention. Now, at the end, all that remains is a single piano melody accompanied by a final, distant squirt of ambient radio noise.
The whole trilogy of records -- Sferics, Etherlands and Invisible Fields -- are an incredible exploration of ambient, future jazz, techno pop, and electronic music, and each record explores a higher complexity of sound and rhythm. You can't be saddened by the end of "Temporarily Not Available," because you can go back to the first record and start over. All the atmospheric ephemera will be there again. Nothing is lost; the ghosts, the dreams, the energized electrons, the vast distances made small: they can fill your head once more.
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