To Move — To Move

[Sonic Pieces — 2022]★★★★★

Reviewed 21 November 2022by Colin Lang

The London-based trio, To Move, offers a new assortment of well-worn ideas, repackaged and reproduced for those with little background in the world of tape-warbled, piano-driven ambience. At least, this is my best guess as to the audience for whom their album is ultimately intended. Think of the hushed hammering of Nils Frahm's piano (he is a label mate on Sonic Pieces), washed over with tape degeneration a la William Basinski.

I listened for anything that would point me in other directions, or at least introduce a mode of production in which somewhat new sonic terrain might have been explored, but, to no avail. This is likely a result of my own limitations as a listener, though I think others with a similar familiarity with this genre of music might feel the same. The fact of retracing certain steps within ambient composition is pretty much unavoidable, and it is not in and of itself an issue, at least not one that can rule out the merits of such a work. The album swells, lovingly, warmly, and even pops on "Bait" with an unexpected ebullience.

To Move's language – a minimalist grammar par excellence – has become the lingua franca of ambience over the last decade or so, which is in dire need of some new device or cultural technique. There is nothing more frustrating than to be able to predict what something will sound like, to fail to offer something unexpected in the texture and tonality of a work. The mix can only do so much when it is composed of by-now ubiquitous sounds. There is surely another dimension that repays repeated listening, though the demand for such attention is must be anchored to a desire to continue, to see what lies ahead. We've been here before, I am certain of it.

Fans of the excellent label's other releases will no doubt find a home in To Move, and perhaps it is indeed a home that the trio recreates. Unpredictability has its faults, too; it is no panacea. I am looking forward to a post-lockdown ambience, which writhes and wriggles without premature resolution. There is a long winter ahead and maybe something radically uncultivated will appear on the horizon.

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