Album Assessment: Stressed Mosaic’s Sophomore LP One other ‘Stressed Mosaic’ of Sonic Experimentation
This man is simply actually good at naming issues. Beginning along with his artist moniker, if apt titling was the one factor wanted to get individuals to pay attention to 1’s music, Stressed Mosaic wouldn’t even want press. It’s troublesome to disregard, to the purpose the place one has to marvel if that is really all idea work. Like an precise visible mosaic, this artist’s work is intricate, lovely and its full impact is actually solely appreciated when one steps again to see the sum of its components. The “stressed” half, nonetheless, makes that sum just a bit off; the experimental facet of the work makes the emotive and emotional complete really feel a bit, effectively, stressed.
Equally when YEDM found Stressed Mosaic along with his first album There’s A lot Left to Discover launched in February 2021, the identify was so apt it was nearly too apt: the unfinished nature of this multi-genre soundclash of an album was purposeful and, once more, fairly concept-driven.
Within the Home windows 95 pinball sport ‘Loony Labyrinth’ – through which you journey again to historical Greece to rescue one thing or different from a minotaur chamber whereas the moon phases are proper (possibly? I by no means beat it) – while you lose a ball, a digitized voice says, “There’s a lot left to discover.” And I’ve come again to music full-bore as a result of that’s what motivates me to create something – figuring out what number of superior issues are on the market, ready to be found and explored.
If that’s not a great cause for a sport and a very good strategy to songwriting and manufacturing, we don’t know what’s. There’s A lot Left to Discover certainly lined numerous uncharted musical territory, particularly in the best way it mashed totally different genres and kinds collectively. Dubstep, krautrock, vaporwave, muzak? Nothing was off limits to discover however the album additionally got here off so cohesively that its attain went wider than anybody anticipated for an experimental album. Stressed Mosaic really has that x-factor like an Underworld or an Aphex Twin the place he’s in a position to make high-concept, technically actually troublesome and, once more, “stressed” music additionally remarkably listenable. It’s no straightforward talent.
That first album title additionally carried with it the portends of extra to return from Stressed Mosaic, and that’s the place we meet him along with his new album, Made by Thawing Ice, launched in March of this 12 months. Once more with the superb titling, one has to marvel if the album title is so good it’s informing how we hearken to the music. With stated title clearly alluding to water, there’s a stream and a type of underwater high quality to this complete album that appears to run as a standard present within the sound design…we expect. If the album wasn’t titled thus, would we nonetheless hear it thus? Mr. Stressed is making us all stressed with this sonic mindjob, and let’s not even get into that jab at notion and perspective contained within the title: it’s widespread to think about ice as being made by freezing water, however who ever thinks of water as being made by melting ice, other than maybe glaciologists. With this album, we’re launched into the Stressed Mosaic earlier than we even hit play.
As beforehand overstated, Made by Thawing Ice has far more stream and musical development than its predecessor, primarily achieved through the liberal utility of vaporwave synths, drone and staticy Moog-style synth work. Beginning with the wavy foghorns of “A La Cara Amarilla” that includes vocalist Lili Aqvq and operating by way of “Sandbags on the Flood of My Insecurities,” which sounds a bit like being trapped in a flooding submarine within the loveliest doable manner, to the character drone-fueled industrial mixture of “Polliwog 1 & 6 7 8,” the water vibes are positively there and that synth work ties all of it collectively.
Much less of a conflict of genres and extra of an IDM redux, Made by Thawing Ice nonetheless accommodates numerous surprises that function exterior of stated redux. “Multicam Behavioral Well being” that includes Expensive Kristin, for instance, takes a pointy left from the primary few songs on the album again into dadaist experimentalism. Largely jazz fusion-inspired with type of camp funk synths driving the Broadway-style lyrics, this monitor is nearly a palette cleanser or an intermission from the remainder of the album. Identical to every little thing else, nonetheless, it’s intentionally positioned. Its closing lyric “please, let me be alone for ten minutes” leads into the precisely ten minutes lengthy “Alone for Ten Minutes” strikes from dadaist to surrealist and is a solution to the query of what occurs to this and plenty of different artists’ minds when they’re, actually, left alone for ten minutes.
From there, the album takes a decidedly jazzy bent however it’s nonetheless acquired that underwater really feel and stream throughout the sound design which permits for these most experimental breaks in “Multicam Behavioral Well being” and “Alone for Ten Minutes.” Made by Thawing Ice additionally appears to be a narrative instructed in sound about perspective, the enormous satire that’s the human thoughts and find out how to hold that overthinking, glitched out supercomputer inside our cranial wall on-line and functioning. A method, in keeping with Stressed Mosaic, it so pour all that mess out on a employees and see if we will make some sense of it. It’s nonetheless unclear if he can or not, however the result’s a killer LP with extra completely apt titles than you possibly can shake a stick at, and, doubtlessly, a world of organized chaos behind the bits of glass that does assist heal some f the feelings round being human, even after they don’t make sense. That’s actually all anybody can ask of a chunk of artwork, and Stressed Mosaic has achieved it in his second album. Fairly first rate progress in a 12 months.
Made by Thawing Ice is out now and will be streamed on Spotify and bought on Bandcamp together with Stressed Mosaic’s first album, the indomitable There’s A lot Left to Discover.