- Psychedelic, almost shoegazey electronics with a peaceful spiritual core.
- A friend told me "the medicine's in the book" when I balked at reading Octavia Butler's Parable Of The Sower in 2020. I wasn't feeling the desire to engage with a post-apocalyptic novel set in the not-too-distant future about a world that felt far too close to our own. When I finally read the book, I discovered my friend was correct. Parable Of The Sower was a tough but necessary read that helped me learn the distinction between hope and optimism. Baltimore's Ami Dang seems to share that sentiment, naming her new album The Living World's Demands, after the poem that opens chapter 13 of the book. "There is no end / To what a living world / Will demand of you," the poem reads. Much like the book, The Living World's Demands is open and upfront about our contemporary darkness while presenting a vision of beauty within the chaos.
On her recent albums, particularly 2019's Parted Plains, Dang gently nudged synthesizer textures against her sitar playing, allowing the timbres to swirl around each other without fully blending. Aside from a rippling delay and the occasional long-tailed reverb, the instruments were left mostly unaffected. On The Living World's Demands, Dang processes every sound, layering them into a psychedelic electronic blur. The anxious background vocals on "Sensations" get sliced to ribbons by a tremolo, while glitching synth samples flicker behind Dang's chorused voice throughout "Bālnā | ਬਾਲਣਾ." At the end of "Betting On The Bull," waves of overdriven feedback rise up to consume the entirety of the mix before fizzling out. Everything is raw and colorful, disintegrating into itself like a pixelated screen.
The album is a testament to Dang's dexterous compositional skill. Though she foregrounded dance grooves on 2016's Uni Sun, she abandoned drum programming on Parted Plains, opting to drive the rhythm through synth arpeggios. The Living World's Demands' renewed emphasis on beats helps Dang pin down the more free-floating elements of her songs and sculpt them into dynamic arrangements. She sets the percussion far enough back in the mix so as to not distract from the rest of the shimmering sound design, but prominent enough to keep its droning swirl grounded. "Oh Dha Ta Na (Tarana)" features the skittering skeleton of a deep house beat that acts as a guardrail when Dang's synth washes and reverse-delayed vocals speed up and spin out. "A Muted Crime" subtly adds percussive stratum, eventually building into a lumbering groove reminiscent of DJ Screw's codeine crawl.
Beneath the shoegazing churn is a warm emotional core. When Dang's lyrics peek out of the haze, they suggest a worldview based on empathy and compassion. Though she writes about the trauma of abusive relationships on "A Muted Crime," her message is of empowerment. "Electrify," she sings, shifting the melody skyward. "Break from your pyre." As she extends that phrase's final syllable, the song opens into its slow beat, accented by a surge of deep bass and sitar plucks that hang like vapor. It's a gorgeous moment that moves the song out of a somber, reverent space and into a more euphoric one.
Dang peels the noisier elements away in the final push towards closer "Become," letting her compositions sparkle more than they crackle. The tension hasn't exactly dissipated, as evidenced by the ominous chord progression of "Circuit," but the layers of sound feel less engulfing. By the end of the album, Dang gets closer to a sense of acceptance. Though staccato synths and sitar solos twist around each other throughout "Become," they never overtake her vocals. She is centered and calm, letting herself "become undone." The world is alive and unrelenting, but The Living World's Demands shows Ami Dang welcoming the challenges of existence, searching for the underlying peace.
Tracklist01. A Muted Crime
02. Sensations
03. Bālnā
04. Betting On The Bull
05. Oh Dha Ta Na (Tarana)
06. A Windy Mind (Prologue)
07. ਸੰਤਹੁ ਮਨ ਪਵਨੈ ਸੁਖੁ ਬਨਿਆ (Unstruck Sound)
08. Circuit
09. Become