Evan Gildersleeve - Wake

A Closer Listen

Everything about Evan Gildersleeve‘s new album is open to interpretation, from the title (Wake as in awakening, or the wake preceding a funeral) to the impressionistic cover to the music, which shifts from beats to drone, instrumental to choral.  Purposefully existential, Wake invites listeners to muse on subjects personal and lofty, while creating an atmosphere in which dreaming might occur.

The title track contains both the soaring cloud of drone and the electric activity of dance beats.  One might focus on either facet.  The video is packed with religious imagery, from halos to outstretched hands to the concept of moving toward the light.  For a while, Wake seems like a rough-edged dance set;, then, as one might expect from a production on the Mesh label, the floor begins to shift.  As the set leads to a piece titled “Grief,” one senses a great deal of emotional processing.  As with “Wake,” the title “Fathom” suggests both the fathoms of darkness and despair and an attempt to fathom or understand.  The vast beats subside at the end of the track, like an outgoing tide, leaving comprehension – or perhaps another void – in their wake.

The choral aspects of “Ego” lead to the single-voice vocal of “Altar,” suggesting a memorial service. If Gildersleeve sounds a bit like Jónsi, it’s no surprise, as he’s worked with Sigur Rós before.  The eradication of beats suggests a frozen emotional landscape, while the voice searches, questions, pleas.  As the drums return in “Portal,” it’s as if Gildersleeve’s heart is free to move again, first sluggishly, then purposefully.

The closing “Grief” is ambient in nature, turning slowly to drone, sounding less like grief than acceptance, the end of the cycle.  The vocals have been broken into little pieces, the percussion restricted to single beats.  Yet the tone is uplifting, conveying a sense of having made it through. Gildersleeve’s personal journey has been translated into a musical arc, but he hopes it will be for others a tabula rasa, a canvas for their own recovery.  (Richard Allen)