"Methods of Motion"
An Album by SQORE & teasea
SQORE & teasea have released their collaborative ambient album
“Methods of Motion” in collaboration with Ambient Pasta’s label.
~
Written by Alex DeSimine(they/them)
Full disclosure: I love both of the humans that made this record. I loved them before they made it, while they made it, and afterwards. Seems like a good time to also remind dear reader that art is in fact not objective but subjective, and that the experience of hearing “Methods of Motion” is inevitably imbued with the experiences I bring to it – namely, loving these two humans. But there are plenty of other things that come packed into my ears when I press play on “I am Concussed…” including, but not limited to:
– a love of wholly enveloping synthesizer sounds
– an affinity for dancing
– an ever-shortening attention span
– an all-encompassing sense of anxiety about the world around me and my tiny silly stupid role in it all
Now that we’ve gotten all the necessary disclaimers out of the way, we progress to the meat and potatoes of why I am stringing these words together – listening to SQORE and teasea’s new collaborative album “Methods of Motion” makes me feel good. It’s a simple sentiment that feels increasingly complex to me. I also make music, and I do that because I love it and always have, but my relationship with this amorphous world seems to be constantly on the brink – sometimes music feels too heady, sometimes not heady enough, sometimes I need it to speak to the great philosophical tightropes of our time and sometimes I want it to shut up and just be light-as-air, sugary fun.
Somehow this album does all of that with grace. Each track is honey-dipped enough to soothe my aforementioned anxieties, fun and bouncy enough to get my body involuntarily grooving and bopping along, and nuanced enough to keep my modern meme-addled brain surprised and delighted without losing the ability to sink into an idea deeply enough to bask in it. So much of this is accomplished through endless moments of ear candy, but also on a macro level with carefully crafted arrangement choices. Em’s mix absolutely sings as well, and for a record so reliant on tone and (pardon my language) vibe, that is nothing short of crucial – and impressive!
The contrast of SQORE’s crunchy, sizzling synths with teasea’s warm and round guitars makes for an experience that seems at once so incredibly of this moment while also completely devoid of a specific time or place – which I suppose is exactly the beauty of so much music being made in this current musical moment of ultraconvergence. All that is to say: “Methods of Motion” is a wonderful and timely addition to my world, at a point where all I want is an album that does and is everything all at once for me, from artists struggling valiantly with the same questions as so many of the rest of us: what does it sound like to flail gloriously and unabashedly in the face of a world that doesn’t value what is most important to you? If you’re searching for anything close to an answer, perhaps start here.
Written by Alex DeSimine (they/them)
(aka Talk Bazaar)
You can listen to “Methods of Motion”
in full through the links above.
