Naomi Perera & Adam Langley are ordinarily a gigging, live performance based outfit. Naomi plays imaginative, improvised flute over Adam’s evolving soundscapes of bubbling, swelling electronics.
Strata is the sound of these two musicians, who would normally work together in person, isolated apart by the current pandemic. This is a science of file swapping & overdubbing, one improvising along to what the other has produced. The results are an excellent EP of experimental drone textures.
There are moments in the tracks on Strata when the breathy flute melodies seem to morph into bubbling arpeggios of synth noise & you’re left uncertain whether what you’re hearing is a synthesised sound or the flute. These moments are incredibly effective, in my opinion, the textures overlapping in transcendent swells of noise.
Embedded in the soundscapes are all manner of day-to-day sounds such as birdsong & the mumbled conversations of neighbours heard through the walls. These sounds add to sense of isolation experienced during the lockdown & strikingly emphasise that we are actually at home & not in a recording studio.
The combination of these warm tones (bassy synth swells & flute) with harsh, buzzing, digital sounds gives several of the tracks a sense of underlying, building menace. This reflects for me the way the Coronavirus pandemic slowly built in seriousness throughout the month of March before the full blown bleakness of lockdown. There’s an almost hauntological aspect to these sonic textures that I can’t quite put my finger on but, nevertheless, I’m utterly captivated by.
Scruffy Theory 