This debut LP from multidisciplinary artist Elori Saxl elegantly balances the sensory and conceptual. The album is ambient, if you want to pigeonhole it, but often feels too active to be constrained by this label. Rather than standing on the precipice of something, The Blue of Distance creates tension by repeatedly diving in and climbing back out. When not juggling discrete melodic and amelodic sections, it slips into the kind of in-betweeny spaces of Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Pink Floyd; any number of tape-looping pioneers.
Saxl does not lean on these established sounds, using them instead as skeleton to support some stunning chamber orchestra arrangements. The oboe of Erin Lensing particularly impresses, repeating hypnotic phrases which transform into the heartbeats of tracks. Found sounds are folded into the mix, too. The most confronting example comes in ‘Wave II’, whose looped beat sounds like a little boat eternally hitting the same jetty. It’s one of many invigorating moments of trance-meets-concrète.
It’s not a surprise to learn Saxl has a background in film. The Blue of Distance is colourfully imagistic, and has some parity with Clint Mansell or Nicholas Britell in its blending of classical/electronic styles. For an album, The Blue of Distance is very visual. It would be impossible, even lacking track titles, not to associate this LP with water, memory, distance. The language Saxl uses is nonverbal, but as precise and intentional as a scalpel. The Blue of Distance uses some more superficial filmic vocabulary too in ‘Blue’, which boasts a desolate and monumental midsection that feels ripped out of a Western score.
The album’s grandness is tempered by a wobbly “information film” vibe. This hip, ultra-analogue hauntology isn’t lip service to a zoomer listening base. It interacts with—and enhances—the album’s themes of memory loss and nostalgia, while ensuring its more grandiose sections never succumb to schmaltz. Saxl is a thoughtful musician whose work achieves transcendence by never trying to force it.
The centrepiece of The Blue of Distance is ‘Memory of Blue’. This 11-minute track is constantly in flux—but it never digresses from or abandons its own fundaments. The track keeps switching things up, and is packed with ideas and experimentations. The tracks juxtaposing styles somehow stay complementary throughout. Its continuous development is impressive, and feels like watching someone play Jenga against themselves, stacking their tower impossibly high. ‘Memory of Blue’ also functions as a vertical slice of the album as a whole. Just as we inspect and distort our own memories, the track is in a beautiful sort of cubist argument with itself, dwelling on a single point from several contradicting perspectives. Its title forms a cheeky—probably unintentional—homage to Vangelis’ Blade Runner track, itself about the falsehood and distortion of memory. Forty years later these concepts still compel and puzzle us. This is a tremendous album whose conceptual richness will keep you coming back for a very long time.
The Blue of Distance is available for purchase and streaming here.
Words: Andrew O’Keefe