Five years after "Body Isolations", Donato Wharton is back with a new release on Serein. He hasn't been musically inactive during these years and dedicated himself to sound design for various dance, theater, video or exhibition projects.
All of these works have certainly a strong influence on his recent music as more than before it tends to stay in the background, waiting for patient, attentive and curious ears to reveal all its nuances.
There is something like a dilatation of time and space with this new release, with sparser, quieter, more minimal climates, close to silence at times.
Everything is in the details, nothing is pushed in the forefront. I find this release less directly seductive than his previous ones, more dark and disenchanted, more radical.
You can easily forget that you are listening to it on certain tracks, as it just slips in the background giving a general color, instilling a mood, an you have to force yourself to come back to the surface and thinking about what you are really listening, because the whole purpose seems more about drowning, as with "A Vast White Solitude" , "Breath Held" or with "Mind Like A Snow Cloud". On "In A Mute Scape", I feel like walking outside during a snowstorm with icy needles hitting my face on "In A Mute Scape".
But there are two exceptions, there is a stream, a slow whirl, a light breeze with finally lightens the torpor through the beautiful guitar of "Ink Mountains", or a few shooting stars crossing a wintry sky, and giving unexpected sparkles of warmth which are then utterly moving, with "A Thousand Miles Of Grass".
These two tracks are the reason why I can connect again to this new release by Donato Wharton, with the same admiration I have for his two albums.
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