Review: The Sight Below – It All Falls Apart
The Sight Below – It All Falls Apart (2010) [Ghostly International] // Grade: A
This second full-length from Seattle’s ambient techno The Sight Below doesn’t even suggest a beat until 13 minutes in, and it’s funny how you barely miss it. Also funny: until “Through The Gaps In The Land” tiptoes in with the first four-on kick, you hardly register that these are songs on a proper album. It’s all background beauty, a harmony swirl of strings, an ocean threatening to crest and crash. Movement within resolute stillness. If ambient is supposed to carry you away, post-classical composer Rafael Anton Irisarri is doing a brilliant job; even the beat itself feels less like climactic satisfaction than the quiet thud of a train click-clacking you around some rain-glossed countryside.
Of course, none of that is so out of the ordinary for The Sight Below. 2008′s Glider established Irisarri’s project as sort of beyond-ambient ambient, fringe-techno capable of cozying up near Lusine and The Field but only at arm’s length. This follow-up only broadens the separation; thanks in part to collaborator (and former Slowdive drummer) Simon Scott, It All Falls Apart is an organic shoegaze haze that ultimately owes less to Seattle’s ambient scene than it does Brian Eno and Kooyanisqatsi-era Phillip Glass. It’s not until a cover of Joy Division’s “New Dawn Fades” that the album even locks into the heartbreaking sheen of real melody, sweeping and sad, seriously goosebump inducing. Tiny Vipers’ Jessy Fortino captures this weirdo Peter Gabriel vibe with the vocals, and though I’ve never loved Joy Division covers—just leave them alone, you know?—this one is a perfect reimagining of the original. I mean, it’s just intense.
And Irisarri seems aware of that; It All Falls Apart builds so precisely to this perfect moment, it’s impossible to imagine what the songs would be in its absence. So much of the album is contingent on what happens before and next, wholly indistinguishable unless you go back and listen track by track with a healthy pause between each. Which, honestly, would be a stupid thing to do; It All Falls Apart is made of movements, a modern symphony to absorb as one piece, not 7 little bites. Apollo Moon was the same way, so was Kooyanisqatsi, and Irisarri is legitimately poised to take a place next to these so-revered composers. Gorgeous, gut-wrenching stuff.
