“The Calm After the Storm” wrote the good Giacomo Leopardi as a complement to “Il Sabato del Villaggio”.
Who knows, maybe the firm Willits & Sakamoto has reached the calm depths of “Ancient Future” because it was first swallowed by the murky maelström of “Ocean Fire”.
If life is an oscillation in which the emotional pendulum reaches exceptional peaks of shimmering ecstasy in its loops, the norm lies in the slow movements that separate tears of joy from laughs of dark despair.
“Ancient Future” (the oscillation) only makes sense if related to “Ocean Fire” (the peak).
The drowned is beyond now: beyond despair, beyond regret, beyond pain. Simply Beyond.
Adrift, perpetually ferried by Sakamoto's limping synths, by his sparse piano lines that hesitate for a moment then flow into the sound, at a crossroads choosing the path with a cautious glance.
There is something absent in this album, something veiled by oblivion. Not a voluntary omission or a studied approximation, but rather an image that just cannot materialize, a state of mind struggling to define the object of its attention.
Piano caresses that layer in the consciousness one after another, unhurriedly, dispensed by the fingers of long and warm reverbs. As if Eno of “Music for Airports” was emptied of its formal inspiration and adjusted to a more human, more substantial dimension.
The liquid counterpoints of Willits' guitar slip and flow into the interstices left by Sakamoto: the Past is gone, the Future has not yet arrived, leaving only the bittersweet contemplation of the Present.
Sometimes computer whirlpools blur the corneas like small dust vortices, but they don't refer to any Jenny, nor to her skirt. They are underwater currents, agents of oblivion that rock the drowned like an immense prayer.
As if the first Roach (that of “Structures from Silence”) were cleansed of any mystical ambition to be anchored in a minimal earthly mood, as if Willits & Sakamoto were taking a long and deep breath, as if the drowned no longer felt fear or terror, but was simply grateful for his solitude.
In Act II of “The Cherry Orchard” the characters are on a small road bordering the property, and believing they are conversing with each other, they follow only the thread of their own thoughts, heedless of the socio/economic storms soon to overwhelm them.
This rarefied climax, this introspection almost dissonant with respect to the overflowing desires (latent or not) that permeate the rest of the Czech pièce increase by contrast the beauty, the scope, and the sense of this part.
And so it is with this “Ancient Future”: listened to on its own, it's an ambient album like many others (despite the class, the touch of Sakamoto emerging repeatedly), but in reality, it should be considered as the other side of the coin of the black vortex of “Ocean Fire” (and the oxymoron of the two titles is no accident).
And the drowned?
If he still had a conscious thought, it could only be this: “Il naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare”.
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