By: Daniela Patrizi
Starless | facebook | twitter | bandcamp |
Released on October 8, 2014 via Independent
Starless‘s music is hypnotic, calming, bright and sometimes dark. On several occasions when I sat down to write about this album during the last sunny days, I had to close all window blinds and turn off the lights, or postpone the process until the dusk came as Presence Withheld wanted to be a soundtrack to the empty night.
Starless is the solo project by Michael Hayden from San Diego, California, and already well known for his active presence in the band Sleep Lady. Presence Withheld is his debut album as Starless and it’s a very different beast to what Michael has done before, emphasizing a stately elegance washed over with wave after wave of enchanting static.
Presence Withheld is a musical journey composed by four movements and spread over about 40 minutes of pure drone ambiance layers, atmospheric experimentation and echoing feedback. There are elements on the album that remind me of the swirling noise of Sunn 0))) and the sun dappled ambience of Hammock.
The music will absorb you utterly and before you know it you’re into the heat haze of ‘Xr’ that sounds like an orchestra breathing or an echo crossing an abyss. The perpetual fizz of the guitar and the warm melody will drag you deeper and deeper until you reach the programmed percussion of the soothing ‘Vela’.
There are so many bipolar moments in the first 25 minutes of the album: ‘Xr’ is bright and so the first moments of ‘Vela’ before it becomes darker completely shedding its brighter parts away. The noises at the end of ‘Vela’ create a notable vertigo of sounds and the music will wrap you completely. I fell in love with ‘Plentiful Teeth’ as soon as I listened to it. I didn’t need to wait to its end to be conquered by its delicate, intense sound that only sensitive souls are able to create. ‘Plentiful Teeth’ arrives directly to your heart and gets under your skin. you can feel its sound and if you close your eyes you can even touch it. It’s melancholic, it’s deep, it’s what I expect from music.
The final track, ‘Torvus’, is a perfect bedtime story and is like the night: it’s warm and lonely. The last part of ‘Torvus’ is a dark-hearted conflagration of echoing feedback that recalls the obscure Steven Wilson side-project Bass Communion and it provides a great, intense, enigmatic conclusion to the album.
Presence Withheld is definitely an emotional work, one that seems to be sad and optimistic and joyful at the same time, and because of this, its forty minutes pass without a single dull moment.
The beautiful artwork of Kristy Hayden makes the all experience perfect.
