Duchamp — The Wild Joy
Duchamp is an Italian, Berlin-based solo project of instrumentally sourced drone ambience, from instruments such as organ, synth, voice and baritone guitar. The Wild Joy is a five-track album, about forty-one minutes long, with tracks ranging from five to ten minutes.
The opener "Sine Proprio" is resonant drones sounding a dreamy, hibernative chord with contrails of resonance cascading up and down the frequency spectrum, likely created with some kind of electroacoustic process, as there is a pleasant shifting variation to the tones created, and an otherworldly disconnection from the typical sounds of the instruments listed in the liner notes, while telltale signs of their characteristic timbres are still audible. The track thins out after a few minutes into a soothing semi-rhythmic swell, with higher pitched feedback mimicking the sounds of crickets at night. There is an occasional clattering and clanging of impacts hinting at a stringed instrument (according to the liner notes this is a baritone guitar). The lush timbres and tonal color of this piece is lovely, and it's not immediately clear how the sound is created.
The album continues with diminished harmonics and focuses on air and the bass frequencies of the drone, gradually becoming more minimal and opaque in a measured, ritualistic manner. the colorful full chord of the first piece is diminished to a single, ghostly tone for the second track "The Shape of Time". The fourth piece "Fulaxos" breaks the trend by being satisfyingly melodic. This is a solo piece for the aforementioned baritone guitar, sounding not unlike a rock bass guitar here, with a pleasant overdrive. Here we get a harmonic-laden post-rock riff. This track is the shortest on the album at 5:39. Closer "The Wild Joy" returns to less structured ambient territory with the a piece like wind whistling melodically through a hole in a cave.
This album is consistently tonally and texturally rich drone music with pleasant contrasts between resonant brightness and dimmer tonalities. The style of the music can be quite minimal but maintains interest through novel usages of instruments and strategic contrasts between the tracks, resulting in a well-rounded recording. The cleverly processed, vividly recorded timbres are the focus here. For more