- Eerie, evocative ambient inspired by autumn and winter that is at once isolating and beautiful.
- Sleepmoss, Lara Rix-Martin's second album as Meemo Comma, purposefully arrives during the depths of autumn. The Brighton-based artist, who also runs the experimental label Objects Limited, says the record is inspired by the Northern Hemisphere's descent into winter; more importantly, how these months of darkness affect her state of consciousness. It's not the first time Rix-Martin has explored liminal spaces. 2016's Cyclizine EP (as Lux E Tenebris) was made in response to taking medication for hyperemesis, or extreme morning sickness, while pregnant, while 2017's Ghost On The Stairs LP touched on the artist's altered experience with auditory processing disorder. Perhaps these conceptual frameworks, however abstractly, are what contribute to the stylistic strangeness of Rix-Martin's music. Sleepmoss, out through Planet Mu, is as eerie and dreamlike as anything she's ever done.
Musing on nature and the seasons, Rix-Martin crafts a lush ambient album, reigning in her previous footwork experiments in favor of something more classical. There are romantic violins ("Sleepmoss"), stormy drum rolls ("Meadhead") and fluttering woodwinds ("Murmur"), often paired with samples of wind, rain and bird calls. While this makes for a soft and mystical sense of atmosphere, Sleepmoss's distinguishing feature is the sinister feeling lurking underneath. Each track tends to decay over its runtime, like artefacts left out in the elements, starting out with a billowing or glowing quality, and then ending up discordant and haunting. The sound design, too, has a sense of wryness. Soothing as it, there's generally something unsettling within—the ghostly animal squeals on "Night Rain," the tinnitus-like ringing on "Amethyst Deceiver." "Windross," with its muddy distortion, sounds like a chorus of angels drowned in a bog.
These moods and textures make Sleepmoss Rix-Martin's most evocative record to date. Her ethereal woodland is easy to conjure, as are her feelings towards settling into winter's darkness. It can be isolating and beautiful at once. While this LP is a promising development from a producer whose past records have chased difficult, abstract ideas, Sleepmoss stops short of delivering a certain kind of fresh voice. In the lead up to this album, Rix-Martin released a FACT mix, where a handful of her tracks, new and old, sat alongside contemporaries like Puce Mary, Caterina Barbieri and the Objects Limited artist RUI HO. Music from these women make up the mix’s stylistic and emotional highlights. Rix-Martin's productions felt less weighty, merely shading the spaces in between. Still, they're essential to floating the artist's wider vision, the dark dream world Sleepmoss also evokes.
Tracklist01. Reaping
02. Night Rain
03. Murmur
04. Anglewood
05. Winter Sun
06. Amethyst Deceiver
07. Windross
08. Lichen
09. Meadhead
10. Firn
11. Sleepmoss
12. Psithur