Alex Zhang Hungtai — Dras

Processed into near-unrecognizable passages of ringng and breath, the saxophone on Alex Zhang Hungtai‘s Dras is unlike any I’ve heard. While the recordings for Dras were made in 2019, it’s clear that a great deal of planning and curating went into the progression and drift of this album as it is now, which moves from strangulated bleats to wide-open expanses into the unknown. The title track opens with what sounds like a phalanx of ring mods and flangers, bellowing from somewhere deep beneath an oceanic trench. The metal chambers of the saxophone have never sounded quite so metallic!

“El Khela” is a disjointed call-and-response in Hungtai’s clang-y patois, terrifying and huge. “Xilitla” and “Estado” are standouts for the distance they measure from their source (the saxophone), as captivating ambient pads that hint at a frightening sublime, beyond objects and minds. I should say that the mood here is more satanic than sanative. If that’s your thing, Dras is the kind of music that would make small children cry. That’s a good thing. This is nothing to say of the immaculate manipulations at work, the textural complexity and resonant membrane achieved via a single instrument.

Fans of Adam Wiltzie and other orchestral/ambient crossovers, will find much here worth repeated trips. Others with a certain proclivity for dread in the face of immense acoustic spaces, should be properly terrified as well.