Going for my morning walks, early in the morning, has been a tradition for me. Waking up between 4 or 5:00 in the morning, typing down the next review, and see what other people think if they like it or not. Yesterday morning, as I walking through my neighborhood, I decided to put on something that’ll calm my stress level down, and see what my earphones will say to my brain, whether it’ll accept it or not.
It was the music of Time Being and their latest release Hidden Structures. Released on the Spotted Peccary label, Hidden Structures offers meditated travels into the unknown. From its question-and-answer routine, Time Being captures the strategic plan to go through this panorama, which has opened up to a place that’s about to unfold.
Time Being are a duo which considers multi-instrumentalist Phillip Wilkerson and Jourdan Laik. They have been around since releasing three studio albums (A Dimension Reflected, A Place to Belong, and An Ocean of Time). What they are interested in is expressing and taking the perfect picture at the right time, at the right place.
They express the feel on what’s happening then, and what’s happening now. And that’s what Hidden Structures is, a moment in capturing the artistic scenery using soundscapes and visuals to create a soundtrack for the mind. It also marks the first time that they use live percussion, brushes, and shakers, which adds the layers down to the beginning and right into the very end.
To create the percussion parts, which is evidential on ‘Celestial Blueprint’ it takes us beyond our solar system with heavy shakers, ominous piano parts, and planets that have a different meaning, and a different way on how to communicate back and forth across the entire world.
‘Framewoven’ is a class on its own. Landing at the right place to reveal a true form of nature that is eerie, quiet, pin dropping momentum, and never knowing who is going to greet you. The sound forms a mellotronic vibe with synthesisers floating around the skies above, walking towards the Phaedra-era of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schuze’s Irrlicht period.
Speaking of Irrlicht, the fourth track ‘Architects of Silence’ says it all. You feel the coldness coming into the air, heavy snow storms approaching, panic-attack momentum during COVID-19, vocalizing choirs, almost having an orchestral vibe thanks to Laik’s inspiration when it comes to classical music, it becomes a dawning moment to know that everything will be different.
There is spoken dialog on ‘Beyond the Observable’. It details our fellow astronauts arriving to another world like nothing they’ve ever seen, witnessing what has happened, a world filled with different creatures, wind coming from the north, dark clouds with massive fires of gigantic light, you can tell something strange has happened before they arrived. It’s almost as if they had witnessed the downfall of a city gone horribly wrong.
On ‘Uncertainty Unveiled’ Wilkerson and Laik pull all of the stop signs out. Brushes quivering in this ghost-town like effect, more minor piano textures with a softer touch, the sounds of frogs croaking in the heart of the swamp, and the danger that approaches us.
It’s almost as if the duo had done a score for Alex Garland’s unsung sci-fi classic Annihilation starring Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh, based on the book by Jeff VanderMeer. By using this track, they use this form of music to create a sinister, yet dangerous sequence, taking place in a quarantined zone called, The Shimmer.
Hidden Structures takes us into unknown possibilities, making the listener confront the danger that approaches, and the wonders of unexplored, enigmatic puzzles that will come to you with an unexpected challenge.
