“Night-time, Long Paths” is from the album “Departures”, the second joint release between Greek sound artist Maria Papadomanolaki (Dalot) and Vietnamese composer Nhung Nguyen (Sound Awakener).
The first Dalot & Sound Awakener collaboration album “Little Things” was a more upbeat and optimistic collection of soundscapes. “Departures” also combines field recordings from cities and natural surroundings with synth sounds, but this time to create unsettling atmospheric soundscapes; darker, more mysterious, reflecting on themes like migration, and the challenges/ uncertainty of human movement around the world.
“Night-time, long path” has a pulse of sorts, a kind of propulsive breathing loop, woven through with sounds, drones and textures. It seems partly terrestrial, with hints of human voices in the fog, but also somehow not of this Earth. The field recordings here – as they are throughout “Departures” – seem smudged, giving them a kind of soft-focus dream-state quality that hints at their settings and conveys a sense of movement, exploration, dislocation, tension, and uncertainty.
That disorienting and subtle interweaving of the mechanical with the more organic sounds, drones and textures of nature and human city-scapes and travel hubs is at the heart of all the tracks on “Departures”. The album delivers something quite special, evocative of the uncertain terrain of our current altered reality as much as it is of alternative realities and journeys through space and time. It’s a place to close you eyes and let your mind wander on a journey into uncharted worlds from the safe confines of your own home. “Departures” is as fitting a way to end 2020 as anything.
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