Benjamin Finger’s Auditory Colors is a synaesthetic treat whose intricate texture rewards attentive listening. Ostensibly an ambient album, Auditory Colors is actually bursting with melody at every level of its rich and varied instrumentation. And whilst publishing as a solo project—composing and recording every track here—Finger has called on a number of collaborators who each enrich the album in their own unique ways.
The first thing you’ll notice is the LP’s imaginative use of loops and field recordings. Abstracted through post-processing and manipulation, these fragments of word salad and sonic texturing become melodic as they repeat and, in some cases, appear to provide the framework of entire songs. They give the album an enormous sense of character and intimacy—a comforting closeness which dodges claustrophobia by miles. The overall feeling they give is warm and nostalgic, with the earnestness and beauty of BBC Radiophonic workshop maestros like Delia Derbyshire and Malcolm Clarke.
More recently comparable could be William Basinski (in particular On Time Out of Time), and Brian Eno and Kevin Shields’ joint EP The Weight of History/Only Once Away My Son. In the case of Auditory Colors’ title track and latecomer ‘See See See’, you can feel a slight Jenny Hval vibe; these tracks both recall some of the ambient pieces from Hval’s Blood Bitch. This is in part due to haunting guest vocals from Inga-Lill Farstad, but also some gothic and ghostly hammering piano and concrète. This is more suggestive than Hval’s work, though, and less melodramatic. The thread which connects all this music—and which is so prominent in Auditory Colors—is a spectral feeling. It’s the there-and-not-there of heavy summer air filling a room.
Auditory Colors very regularly has this feeling of thick air. Electronic organ creates a fog which diffuses discrete musical shapes into blobs of colour. ‘Greef Signals’ uses some gentle noise structures to suggest rolling waves or hissing bellows—the cry of air as it is thrown unwillingly around. But melody always cuts through this thickness, intercepting it with joy, clarity and dissolving tension. Melodies are often so short as to resolve immediately, only to then loop right back round again. As a listener, this means you’re transfixed but constantly rewarded; lulled to a sense of calm. Auditory Colors is a rich, compelling and active listen; an audio cleanse that’s impossibly packed with ideas but never treads on its own toes.
Auditory Colors is available for purchase and streaming here.
Words: Andrew O’Keefe