A few weeks ago, we discovered the composer Derrick Stembridge with Existence, the excellent album of his project Unkowndivide. This summer, the artist is back with Drifting In Silence, his main project. With False Awakening, Derrick Stembridge offers us an ethereal musical journey. Released on May 28, 2021, False Awakening is available in cassette and digital format.
The dimension of False Awakening is eminently poetic and philosophical. Through seven enigmatic soundscapes, it explores the nature and subject of dreams and Carl Jung’s theories on the subject.
The immersion is soft and progressive. “Silent Patterns” emerges from the silence with a luminous chord whose shifting pattern takes the listener to ethereal worlds. “Myth of Memory” seems closer to us, earthier and more familiar thanks to the sound design of gurgling water and singing birds. The synthesizer atmosphere that embraces almost the entire sound spectrum could remind us some contemplative moments of the excellent Death Stranding, a video game masterpiece by Hideo Kojima. More abstract, “Unknown Archetype” offers a dissonant sonic texture from which emerges a piano melody whose notes could be counted on one hand. The mood of “The Shadow” takes the listener to a more mysterious place, just as musically sparse as the previous track. After “Abstract Dreams,” a rather dark track, the light returns with “Preconscious Mind.” Finally, “False Awakening” delights the ear with its guitar harmonics sailing on an ocean of synthesizers.
With its drones, its constantly evolving sound textures and its minimalist melodies that emerge from a haze of synthesizers, False Awakening invites the listener into a universe that is strange, serene and sometimes a little surreal at once. There, in a place situated between light and darkness, on the border of consciousness and unconsciousness, remains a treasure of reverie accessible thanks to music capable of plunging the mind into a meditative state. Music whose sound textures will remind some of the colors of Vangelis, Robert Rich or Max Richter.
