Review: DAFAKE – Quiet Geometry
A blur eternally unsharpened on the horizon line.
Headphones are "suggested", rather than the firmer prompt of “recommended”. Such is the gentle imposition of this record, in which field recordings, feedback and strange materials encroach on the stereo perimeter with the tentative energy of small creatures, reluctant to stride into the vulnerability of the open centre. The microphone feedback is a microcosm of the album's defining balance of forces; it swells slightly and then stalls as if tethered by thread, prevented from flooding the frame. It's a record that is continually becoming, unfurling from traces of speckled distortion or rustled objects, without ever reaching a point of flourishing. A blur eternally unsharpened on the horizon line.
There's an associated sense of climate extremity on Quiet Geometry. These pieces seem on the brink of uninhabitable – the temperature untenable, a scantness of atmospheric oxygen – with activity thinned to the hums of mild winds through thick waxed leaves, or skittering insect legs, or running water. Otherwise there’s a palpable emptiness, occasionally giving way to stimuli-starved hallucinations of bustling voices, footsteps, or melodic loops akin to dancing phantoms (as in the beautiful pattern that materialises during “Sentient Sounds”, or the warbling post-rock progression on “Myodesopsia"). One of the highlights is the one-two of “Behind Alice’s Wall” and “Electricitism: the former an array of gong-like resonances hung between scabby interference and tinkling chimes, the latter like an emaciation of the former that leaves just interference and high-pitched feedback. At moments like these, it feels as though the record could barely reduce itself any further. Quiet Geometry is always skirting the rim of terminal fadeout, clinging to wisps and letting others slip, scuffing its underbelly on silence.
