An excellent record of other electronics for a musical spirit that will live on among us.
On June 16 left the earthly dimension Graham Dowdall, English sound traveler who left a lot of music behind and in front of him, collaborating a lot with Pere Ubu, Nico, played with a very young Morrissey in the post punk group Ludus and did a lot of other things, and here we listen to his last work, “Komorebi” released under the name Gagarin, an electronic ambient project that has been the most important musical thing for him in the last years.
Fan and sponsor of the Abroath soccer team, political activist, in short Graham has done and experienced many things, living a lot of music in the moment in which it was happening, from the Beatles to raves, Graham was there and making music. “Komorebi” is a record of ambient electronica, with lots of sounds in it and from a very high rate of musical quality. The musical name Graham has given himself for this sonic adventure is as appropriate as ever because like a novel Gagarin he yearns for infinity and is not afraid to experiment for himself.
The record is very well structured and carries on the electronic discourse he started with this name, and here he takes it to its highest level, managing to uniquely blend ambient, drone and a dose of retro electronica that is very reminiscent of certain things from the 1980s.
As mentioned before Graham has been through so many musical adventures and has seen and heard all kinds of things, and being a musical sponge he has managed to absorb so many musical codes and then use them in turn reworked. “Komorebi” is a continuum that is never the same, a continuous search for rarefied but powerful sounds, a marriage of ambient and other instances that has hardly ever been heard, a great musical ear that explores and seeks and brings peace, a peace that can only be found at high altitudes, at the height of the clouds.
Komorebi in Japanese has the literal meaning of “the light filtering through the trees,” describing that initially dazzling sensation given by the direct contact between the eyes and the sun’s rays, followed by the peace produced by the brilliant green of the leaves and the play of shadows on the ground.
As is often the case in Japanese it is much more than a word, and it is a concept that is difficult to reproduce, a meaning that we have brought back to the West and that fits very well with the line of this record is the search for light within darkness, hope within darkness.
