Like a drift through an electroacoustic diary: Metals, the new album by Scottish composer, sound artist and instrument builder Scott Gordon, feels like being drawn into a memory machine that oscillates between offering comfort and stirring unease. At the centre is Gordon’s self-built SPI – a »Spinning Plate Instrument« fashioned from scrap metal and motors, sounding like a fusion of Harry Bertoia sculptures and glitchy ambient beings. The first half, »And Away I–IIII«, envelops the listener in soundscapes like faded Polaroids fluttering in the wind. Melancholic but never heavy, tones drip and flicker, dissolving like mist over asphalt. This is music that doesn’t impose but gets under the skin – like a memory that flares up and fades away almost simultaneously.
Then, a rupture: »Tilts I–IIII« clatters, rattles and trembles. The textures become sharper, the metallic raw material more tangible. Beats creak and crack like abandoned industrial halls at night. Here, the SPI is not merely played but twisted and reshaped. Still, everything remains fluid: there is no clear resolution, only constant motion. Metals provides no answers. It invites listeners to sink into a trippy drift, leaving the body behind and floating somewhere between music and sound – a sonic liminal space where one can easily get lost.
Metals
