Paperbark Reveals the Secret Wonder of Everyday Spaces on What Was Left Behind

What Was Left Behind finds Paperbark creating a subtle depth of sonic focus with layers of sound conveying a textural sensibility like tape hiss to run through and over the main tonal experiments run across the album. The title track has what sounds like a distant organ echoing from a giant room somewhere deep inside an abandoned building like a ghost of music emerging as a reminder of a history often glossed over and forgotten. “Open Memory” sounds like another song from this setting with the sound of coins or metallic stones dropping in the middle distance, the percussive sound of which cuts through every so slightly through an evolving drone that develops into a more active sonic figure like a constantly resonating sound interweaving with a shining and repeating sound like plugging in a mysterious radio signal into a device to replicate that pattern as a series of noises brimming forth with a calmingly indistinct quality, true ambient without being an identifiable environmental source. Across the album Paperbark seems to have tapped into a forgotten side of neglected places and finding an abstract narrative that reveals the deeper emotional resonance of the place as on “Bring Up The Scars” where a repeating white noise washes over a pulsing sound figure that shifts in activity as if a inanimate object was revealing its history to anyone that will listen and at least have the ears and imagination to translate those tales in a form accessible if not verbal. Paperbark infuses each track with this imaginative interpretation of the essence of what seems like an otherwise neglected place or one not seen as extraordinary to most people but within which the musician has found a multitude of meanings and invites the listener to find these resonances of energy and ambient knowledge and wonder of everyday places for themselves. Listen to What Was Left Behind on the Constellation Tatsu Bandcamp.

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Author: simianthinker

Editor, primary content provider for this blog. Former contributor to Westword and The Onion.