Alastair Galbraith
Cry

I find myself in a lost place, at the end and the beginning of everything.
That ancient and abandoned refuge, yet still warm, welcoming, and protective as it once was, untouched by the afflictions of the body, the hostilities of nature, the exhausting grip of "society".
That timeless place that is packed, and (almost) forgotten, in the most hidden part of the mind.
Often, I have tried to reach it, but in vain, too distant, too different.
I know it's there, somewhere.

It's these sounds that gently project me inside it.

Acrid impulses.
Faint gurgles.
Dreamlike murmurs.
Indefinite, suspended melodies, vulnerable.
Warm but indifferent, impersonal, pure colors.
A mantric cloud envelops everything, gently.

The curiosity of the unknown slithers among the mysterious, velvety secret rooms.
The "sleep" becomes deeper, less reassuring; the matter denser and more uniform.
A subtle balance between quiet, uncertain euphoria and primordial fear wavers until it breaks: from "instability" to "stability," from "compromise" to radicality, from R.E.M. reverie to the inner abyss:

a journey into the dark galleries of the subconscious, a gloomy forest populated by souls belonging to who-knows-which other lives, Meatwork;
Full Soup Head, the bottomless well into which indecipherable elements perpetually fall from the fringes of the neuronal universe;
then reaching Koterana, the uncontrolled vortex of ecstatic (individual) madness, where the entire titanic and "miserable" human history (universal) dances in an endless circle.

But it is the fleeting tracks, those intimate, melancholic, colorful semantic fragments floating ubiquitously in the thick gray network, unreached treasures sparkling on the cold beaches at the edges of perception, that light up, that give life to the experience.

And finally, I feel, as if this impossible place must exist, somewhere, even in the sensible, tangible. Perhaps, it is a place I truly frequented, and that frequented me, before, but not before: before the before, before time. Yes, it is definitely that... untouched by the afflictions of the body, the hostilities of nature, and the exhausting grip of societies...

Through meditation, the album connects rational consciousness with a particular and limited yet intense portion of infinity that hides within our finite, tiny shell, made of changing amorphous figures created by electrical impulses decoding and reinterpreting reality. We are our subconscious, without being it. But it does so with a precision and care I didn't think possible.

As eclectic and out of one's mind as it is, it's equally introverted and calm like nothing else in the world.
In the continuous interplay of forces between folk mysticism and psychedelia, the New Zealander Galbraith, as in his previous works (more focused on folk and less on psychedelia, terribly reminiscent of a certain Syd), follows a deeply introspective style, making us experience a real daydream: illogical, arcane, enigmatic, feverish, relaxing, disturbing. A dream that has its peaks of tension but has the caution and sensitivity to never turn into a nightmare.

So intimate that it seems one might reach the cryptic genetic truths of the species.

Hidden gems, small old wooden boxes meticulously cared for, a bit creaky but still perfectly functional.
The scent of ancient pages of untold stories.
Atmosphere of eternity...

Like waves crashing against each other, intersecting and shifting, so the different patterns of electronic drones do with each other, sometimes remaining restless, sometimes giving the opposite result, almost canceling each other out. Occasionally accompanied by an infinitely subdued voice and percussion, which come and go, like the "electric" strings, torn bagpipes, moldy accordions, aged guitars.
What is always there, above all, is that eternal being who, as such, cannot but, infinitely sad, cry.