- The debut album from a rising star in the American ambient scene is a quiet and patient affair.
- Even though I'll Look For You In Others is the debut album from Patricia Wolf, the Portland-based DJ, producer and all-around master of sound has been garnering accolades in the American ambient scene for the past couple of years. She's a hardware enthusiast, deeply vested in the world of modular synthesizers, and plays live regularly, opening for artists like Fennesz. But she also straddles the more academic and experimental end of the spectrum, working as an avid field recordist on projects like "a trip" to Mount St. Helens (which I strongly recommend for anyone in need of a dose of spring sounds). I'll Look For You In Others sits somewhere between these two worlds.The album was made entirely through experiments with hardware processors (according to the liner notes, each track was created through "digital FFT algorithms that pull apart and reconfigure audio"), yet still manages to conjure eight poignant elegies of loss.
I'll Look For You In Others, from its song titles to its liner notes, is an unfiltered and visceral response to two deaths in Wolf's life: her mother-in-law, to cancer, followed shortly by a close friend. Although she's processing grief, the lasting feeling on I'll Look For You In Others is, if not uplift, then certainly something approaching comfort. The opener "Distant Memory," for example, employs Wolf's warbling vibrato on a lead melody that is both wondrous and a bit melancholy, like catching the sunrise and knowing that the brilliance of the colors won't stick around for long. Even on one of the record's most solemn tracks, the elegiac "Funeral," the marching organ chords are played out in their entirety, forcing a moment of pause and introspection.
Allowing each note to play out like that speaks to the album's overall aesthetic, its ethos of slowness, as if Wolf is inspecting each note through a jeweler's loupe. On the title track, two drawn-out chords are stretched as far as they can against each other. The effect isn't dissonance but intimacy and when the single notes appear higher in the mix, it is like catching the sound of friends laughing as they make their way back to a campfire. And at the start of the "The Culmination Of," for example, you can clearly identify where Wolf has included her wordless singing, but as the song continues and she adds more layers of textures, it becomes increasingly difficult to figure out where her voice ends or begins.
I'll Look For You In Others is a muted but deeply moving meditation on loss. This muted quality adds a layer of complexity to the big feelings Wolf summons across the record. But even with her sorrow, Wolf is careful not to get caught up in the feedback loops of grief. The somber chord progression on "Lay to Rest" is offset brilliantly by her falsetto, giving it a hint of the nearly celestial. This careful vacillation between acceptance and memory is what makes the album such a lovely tribute.
Tracklist01. Distant Memory
02. The Culmination Of
03. I'll Look For You In Others
04. Funeral
05. Severed
06. Recombination
07. Lay To Rest
08. Letting Go