- Francis Harris goes full-on ambient, mixing intense, resonant drones with acoustic instrumentation.
- Francis Harris has covered a lot of ground in the more than two decades he's spent in the electronic scene. He's put out everything from tech house to ethereal experimental music as a key player behind projects including Adultnapper, Frank & Tony and Aris Kindt. Although Harris cut his teeth behind the decks, the work he's dropped under his own name tends to be reserved and sophisticated—tracks for people who go to the party for the soundsystem instead of the bar. "I'm a studio nerd. I wanna make albums and record bands. I like to cook and listen to music and read books," he told RA in 2014. With this in mind, it seems fitting that his latest album, Thresholds, tinkers with eerie, cottony ambient. The LP strips his sound to the bare minimum, straying from the rich, jazzy palette that defines his signature solo style.
Thresholds is sometimes overcast and oblique, but it's often charming and approachable. "Rebstock Fold" pairs ashy crackles with a bold instrumental palette that mirrors the work of neoclassical labels like Erased Tapes. "Cut Up" skitters along like a featherweight drum & bass track that never drops. "On That Occasion, Landeau" drenches an otherworldly female voice in a stuttering tremolo effect, which rides atop a backdrop of silvery chords. The closer, "Every Degree Of Distance," is the most poetic of the record's tracks, thanks to a stoic guest feature from Eliana Glass. If older Harris cuts like "Lostfound" and "Plays I Play" were romantic torch songs, then this new material evokes the hazy ache of Grouper.
The music on Thresholds originally came to life as a series of synth sketches composed for several Public Domain films that aired on Harris's livestream channel, Public Records TV. He fleshed out these arrangements over the course of several months, calling on artists like Dave Harrington and Pan.American mastermind Mark Nelson to play on the album, coloring new shades of grey into Harris's cryptic compositions. Yet, while some big names appear this record's 12 tracks, Thresholds' sonics occasionally feel a bit thin. "Useless Machines" is centered on melancholic synthesizers and the dissonant thrum of an e-bow—you get the feeling it could have appeared on an ambient compilation 20 years ago as much as a new record in 2022. "New Pastoral" utilizes a pitter-pattering tom groove to lay the framework for unsettling piano flourishes and warbling atmospheric textures, though it never quite comes together. Thresholds is touted as Harris's ambient album, but previous efforts like Minutes Of Sleep put a somewhat prettier and more engaging spin on a similar approach.
On Harris's prior releases, the rhythms were offset by a sort of existentialism that hung over the music like a fog. Minutes Of Sleep was recorded in the wake of his mother's passing, while Trivial Occupations pondered the idea of concept-less art. My personal favorite, 2012's Leland, juxtaposed lush keys with microhouse grooves, grappling with another family loss. Inspired by current political movements and the fight for a sustainable future, Thresholds is Harris's least individualistic album, or just his most formulaic, depending on how you look at it. It's hard to make an offensive ambient record, and Thresholds certainly isn't one—it's full of spine-tingling sounds and haunting melodies. But by straying from the introverted spirit that made his earlier work so rich, Harris ends up with an album that's more challenging than anything he's put out before, demanding that you sink deep into its textures to find its hidden, elusive pleasures.
Tracklist01. Useless Machines
02. And Everything Is One Thing After Another
03. Rebstock Fold
04. Earth Moves
05. Thresholds
06. Luck Takes A Step
07. I Can Still See Us
08. Speculative Nature Of Purposive Form
09. Cut Up
10. New Pastoral
11. On That Occasion, Landeau
12. Every Degree Of Distance