- A collection of remixes and edits expands on the ambient artist's exploration of subterranean tunnels.
- A network of storm drains below Melbourne attracts generations of urban explorers, despite the danger (and illegality) of spelunking underneath the streets of Australia's second-largest city. Melbourne-based composer and producer Lisa Lerkenfeldt is drawn to the drain system for another reason: its ample reverb, which she created an Ableton patch to simulate as to avoid the impractical work of dragging recording equipment underground with her. The result was last year's Halos of Perception, a gorgeous ambient album whose processed piano loops nonetheless felt a bit too pristine to capture the danger and thrill of their inspirations. Suite For The Drains a compilation and self-described "epilogue" to Halos of Perception, adds a bit of much-needed grit to Lerkenfeldt's compositions, and is by far the more immersive and expansive of the two releases.
Suite For The Drains is bookended by two alternate versions of "Cobwebs." The first, a "Wet Glitter Remix," doesn't do much more than play with the tape echo threaded between the piano notes. The latter is a longform version that stretches the piece to 38 minutes—nearly the length of Halos of Perception itself, and almost half the length of this compilation. The extended "Cobwebs" continues in the vein of her 2021 tape piece "A Liquor of Daisies" by finding a perfect piano chord and inhabiting it for the better part of an hour. A plaintive major chord bobs through a sea of delay, undergirded with suspenseful notes in the left hand. The impression is of an aqueous expanse, as if the drains have emptied into a sunlit sea.
In between are a series of remixes, collaborations, outtakes and pieces with a spiritual connection to Halos of Perception and its preceding single "With Water Up to Her Knees." Claire Rousay provides a claustrophobic remix of "Stairway to the Interior" that actually sounds like something you might hear underground, foregrounding the field recordings that ebbed ominously in the background of the original piece. Fellow Melbourne musician Emile Frankel collaborates on a churchy alternate version of "A Fragrance of Moss and Chalk," while Polish musician Martyna Basta joins Lerkenfeldt to create ecstatic whoops of digital interference on "Even the Walls Have a Voice." There's also an improvisation recorded in an actual drain with another local, Abby Sundborn, bringing the album closer to its inspirations than any reverb patch could hope to approximate.
The main attractions throughout all this music are Lerkenfeldt's piano samples and her arsenal of reverb patches and tape delays. Though the pieces on Halos of Perception and Suite For The Drains are assembled from her regular diaristic piano sketches, she knows how to record a piano so pristinely that you can practically feel the texture of the keys as you listen. At its best, Lerkenfeldt's music can feel like the most plangent piano chords from all the most beautiful deep house songs in history, left to flood and decompose. Suite For The Drains is this sound's most evocative expression thus far, a journey through subterranean darkness that ends in a wash of blinding light.
Lista de sequência de músicas01. Cobwebs (Wet Glitter Remix)
02. Limestone (Damp Earth Remix)
03. Improvisation in a drain (with Abby Sundborn)
04. A fragrance of moss and chalk (with Emile Frankel)
05. Stairway to the interior (claire rousay Remix)
06. Ripples form in a black temporary lake
07. Even the walls have a voice (with Martyna Basta)
08. Halo
09. Cobwebs (Extended)