Review: Tutti Harp - Tła

The movement of Tła is unique. Without drums to provide a sense of physical impact (note – this is the second review in a row to note the allure of drumless beats), each track surges forward in a series of limbless, aquatic thrusts. One beat ripples into the next; the body cascades into itself and expands again like a jellyfish, hovering in stillness briefly before the process repeats. The waters are warm and gentle – deep blue swells of ambient dub and quivers of triplet delay, parting at the request of those soft, pattering rhythms. The tracks are melodic in a manner that feels almost nonchalant, tipping idly between two chords as though dragged back and forth by the tide, dripping into my head without any desire to sway my emotional disposition – just a desire to be heard.

Sometimes I spot debris in the liquid: crackles of complaining stylus, stammers of failing magnetic tape, hisses of analogue decay. They float before my eyes like memories recalled from nowhere; emblems of the past amidst a comatose soundscape that otherwise ignores the passage of time. In fact, it isn’t until the EP’s final track (“Las”) that the haunts of remembering start to drag at the EP’s blissful drift, with a chords solemnly ascending beneath a synth that flickers uncomfortably in the present, itching to return to its home on a 1970s public information VHS.