- Francis Harris been a busy polymath for over a decade. His solo work (under his given name, Adultnapper and Lightbluemover) and collaborations (Frank & Tony, Sycophant Slags) have touched on house, electro, ambient and even jazz and classical. Aris Kindt, a new project with childhood friend Gabe Hendrick, is the closest Harris has come to dub techno. The pair wrote their debut album, Floods, over the course of a year from separate homes in Brooklyn and San Diego, using little more than an old 808, a Eurorack modular synth and two guitars. With a minimal palette and introspective conceit (the album is said to explore how memories change), the music lands somewhere between Harris's delicate Minutes Of Sleep and the deep pulse of Frank & Tony's You Go Girl, but doesn't feel rooted in either album.
"We wanted something that was always teetering a line between atonal noise and melodic musical structures," Harris has said of Aris Kindt's sound. And while that's part of what we get here, there's much more to uncover in the spacious expanse. The pace of Floods is slow but deliberate, growing upwards from the subterranean rumble of "Now Grey" into the title track's dubby, weightless groove. It's not until "Blue Sky Shoes" that the duo's 808 comes out, which "Snowbird" goes on to smother with piano, strings and snarls of distortion. "Every New Thing" adds a silver lining to the album, and sure enough, "Embers" lets in some light just before the cathartic end. Hendrick's guitar warms the shadows as a lone hi-hat gives Floods its only moment of levity.
It's no coincidence that Floods can feel cinematic in its flow—Harris wanted a visual component from the start, and enlisted Danish artist Rikke Benborg to make a film. Her largely black-and-white piece comprises old footage related to the body, destruction, memory and time, all edited and superimposed for a ghostly effect. Grainy images and muted hues perfectly suit the misty textures of reverb and flickering guitar notes. The visuals can be a bit graphic and unsettling, which gives Floods an ominous undertone that might've otherwise felt sullen or simply ambivalent. That range of possible interpretations only enriches the album's allure.
Tracklist01. Now Grey
02. Floods
03. Blue Sky Shoes
04. Snowbird
05. Every New Thing
06. Embers
07. Braids