--Ada Wofford
----Released 14 February 2021
Typically, when I review an album, I review it track-by-track in my notebook and then synthesize that into a review of the full album. I can't do that with APOPHENIA. This isn't a track-by-track album, it's an Album. A full, complete Album. Such things are rare and so immediately it possesses value. But the real value is in the music. Soft, somber, almost accidental (but not in the sense you think)—as if you heard it while walking down the street, piano peeking out of a nearby window. Almost as if you are not supposed to hear it. Music for no audience. APOPHENIA is a study in subtly.
The album is mostly instrumental and when there are vocals, they're used more as a means to heighten the atmosphere and tension, less so as a means of conveying a message. This works extremely well and invokes memories of Grouper's moody, melodic 2014 album, Ruins. Fisher's voice is sweet yet rich, powerful but never overwhelming. It glides atop thick piano chords, slick with atmosphere. There's a hint of lo-fi at work in the production and it's something that I feel really completes the aesthetic of this album. The music is so minimalist and atmospheric that a super clean hi-fi production would have completely contradicted the character and personality of the music. The hiss and space allow the music to breathe and exist fully.
We typically cover gear and the recording process but there really isn't any gear involved on this album. The track "A Roseate Spoonbill o'er the Grand Bayou" changes things up with the use of a synth (a Yamaha PS-20 Fisher joking refers to as "The Beach House keyboard"), but other than that, it's simply piano and vocals. But the artist was nice enough to talk to me about the meaning and inspiration for this album:
APOPHENIA is a love letter to New Orleans; to my childhood roots in classical piano studies and my beloved teacher, Meral Guneyman; to the many souls who have graced my journey in this life and met me as if not for the first time, their sounds filling the background of some of these songs’ original demos. Apophenia is a love letter to my intuition and adaptivity. It is also a term first coined during early schizophrenia research: I used to worry that I would become schizophrenic like my paternal grandmother. I lucid dream almost every night and often wake to a less-than-real feeling world. I’ve witnessed inexplicable phenomenon; spirits, phantom audio, inanimate objects standing up and tossing themselves off of bookshelves or curling in no breeze. Where do you draw the line between synchronicity and delusion? Paranoia and tapping in? This album has been a vision of mine for the better part of a decade — the material is largely instrumental, vocals (when they do occur) a new territory of expression in softness & vulnerability. It was recorded at my favourite studio in the Lower Garden District during its final days of Being, on a grand piano I learned and caressed like kin; short songs sweet as poems or memories [ones that stay]. The earliest of this music was written on an upright piano in a house on St. Ann, close to Bayou St. John (my neighbourhood now) back in the summer of 2017 — sounds of Cajun cooking stirring summer heat and new love in the background. New Orleans has gifted me a life rich with travel from every angle; there are songs written in and for Brooklyn, Washington state, Vermont. A profound moment on the Grand Bayou further south of the city is burned in my brain forever: a most intense and heartbreaking scene from a music video I was helping create with Christin Bradford, during sunset, came to breathless pause as a roseate spoonbill flew overhead. The final moments are a symphonic sample in the depths of the swamp recorded by Adam Keil, without whom this record wouldn’t exist.
APOPHENIA means to find meaningful connections between unrelated things. As a writer, that's basically my job. Especially as someone who writes about music, it's almost impossible not to make such connections. And so, I'll cease my poetry and speak plainly: Go purchase APOPHENIA and let it move you. Listen to it fully. It's an Album, not a collection of tracks. It's the type of album you can listen to while reading, writing, walking, or drifting off to sleep. But it's also an album you can zoom in on and listen to critically, appreciating the complexity of the work. The album can be purchased on BandCamp. Click below to listen:
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