Only geniuses and the naive ones deal with the question: What is infinity? And while there are apparently or seemingly limits to physical space, it can be said with certainty that refuge can always be found in one’s own endless interior. Among the last great and impressive explorers of these shallows are artists like Sarah Davachi.
On the one hand, this is due to her impressive sound, which is just spreading out again on her new album »Antiphonals«. And on the other hand because of sentences of hers like: »I make music for myself – I make the music and sound that I want to hear and that I need to hear. I think it’s as simple as that: making the kind of music that I want to experience myself is just a deeply satisfying endeavor in a lot of different ways.« Which in itself is not a discovery. Davachi works here with engaging and minimal sounds. » It’s a type of music making that means a great deal to me and that has helped me tremendously in my understanding of my relationship to space and time and the world around me.« So music as a measurement of the world after all.
Davachi doesn’t send anyone on a journey, she takes them with her on her own journey. (Big difference!) That’s why the 33-year-old has different approaches to finding her own sound. When she hears things on her albums that she would like to do differently, it’s not a reason for doubt, but impetus for future work.
Come with me on a journey
The path of »Antiphonals« began in February last year. »My process is a lot of back-and-forth recording, editing, listening, etc., and most tracks run that course over a period of several months.« All the work on the eight tracks took place in her own studio in Los Angeles. »To me it sounds like an extension of Let Night Come On Bells End The Day in that it’s very intimate and kind of sparse and perhaps a bit melancholy, focusing on a very specific kind of sound. But I’m not sure, exactly, because I think where it fits in for me is going to be different than where other people might hear it.«
»Making the kind of music that I want to experience myself is just a deeply satisfying endeavor in a lot of different ways.«
Sarah Davachi
»Border of Mind« perhaps most clearly indicates the direction in which this album heads. Like an autumn night, heavy sounds drift over the noise of a recording device, a string instrument sounds in the distance. Everything is focused on this one point. Approximate references would be William Basinski or Christina Vantzou. But in an infinite space, even close connections are endlessly distant. It is one of the first tracks Sarah Davachi worked on for »Antiphonals«.
Texture of Start and Stop
Like all explorers, Davachi uses any means to get around. Her love for musical instruments appears in every article about her: » I’m very much attracted to and inspired by the limitations and boundaries of musical instruments. I like to think of musical instruments in a very idiosyncratic way and get to know what they can do and how they create a dialogue with the player. For instance, with the Mellotron, the tape loops are not actual loops and when you hold down a key the sound cuts out after about 8 or 9 seconds.« This texture of start and stop interested Davachi. Because it is part of a larger and more continuous structure. There it emerges, the big picture. With scaled down approaches. Because Davachi’s sound is still in the realm of minimalism, ambient and composition.
The Canadian artist can look back on an impressive discography with a multitude of albums, each recording an own journey, a touch that resonates in the innermost. The fact that Davachi is a doctoral candidate in musicology becomes a minor matter. Her artistic work is already a world of its own, in which the echo of infinity resounds in every second.
