[Reviewed by Peter Marks]
And so winter comes to the land, with icy winds cutting across our throats. Dryft give us a third album to go along with our surroundings, but take it well beyond just simple frost. We’re thrown across the frozen lake until our bodies crack through and we are left to peer up at the diffused sunlight as we drown in the frigid, murky depths. While we breathe in the water which seals our doom, our thoughts rise up from the subconscious muck time has embedded them in.
It’s a small thing to have lived, but to remember it all, now there’s the trick.
We go through our days distracted by the ephemeral wisps advertisers and their marketing puppet masters conjure up. I know few who are able to distance themselves from this never-ending, mind numbing and nauseating assault; competition is fueled by the fragile egos of those who just cannot be satisfied until they’ve bested everyone around them in some sort of petty race to acquire the most trinkets. As is the case these days, the younger they are, the more hard-wired this behavior is; go ahead and attempt to pry some kid’s digital leash away… I warned you. Dryft’s music is an antidote to what I’ve just described, the swirling pads and wonderfully manipulated rhythms punctuate the silence gently.
Like the first footfalls on newly fallen snow, that hush which shuts out everything else. We are insulated here from a world which has the nerve to state that we must hoard all we can on one hand whilst simultaneously saying that no one gets out alive on the other. This collection is like inhaling crystalline vapors of liquifying oxygen; most are not really going to do as this record asks and stop to reflect on their lives and how they’ve chosen to live them. ‘The Blur Vent’, it’s a perfect name for this place. Where the clocks grind to a halt, everything freezes and we’re able to free ourselves long enough to truly perceive what is going on around us.
It all goes so quickly, the names and faces and times and places. Nothing endures. You get your shot at the wheel but only one spin, some spend their entire lives in pursuit of answers which just aren’t there. The inherent randomness of how our days are played out probably isn’t random at all but humanity has not raised itself up high enough to perceive how the map is defined and where the borders have been drawn. We crawl across the surface of Earth proclaiming our mastery over all but you only have to look up at the stars to know the stark truth: we’re nothing but the blink of an eye. Once the impulses stop and the synapses flicker out… goodnight.
Tellingly, what made this one connect with me was lying around listening to it and casually glancing down at one of my feet. On the inner side of it, I watched my own pulse moving through a surface vein. I sat there, spellbound for the rest of this record just looking at it while Dryft’s work was playing. They went together remarkably well and if there’s a connection to be drawn, Cadoo’s latest is too oblique to reveal anything. But it’s there, just out of reach… quietly plotting it’s course from points unknown to a destination somewhere beyond the sphere of perception. Charming as this all is, Dryft don’t make long records and the vent is now closed.
Dryft – The Blur Vent
n5MD, CATMD230
CD/Digital 2014
Santa Sangre 