- The British, Polish and Indian artists collaborate on an LP that evokes Jon Hassell and Talk Talk with a syncretic blend of genres and traditions.
- How can an artist raised in dubstep and garage find a common language with a free jazz clarinetist devoted to minimalism? The result is In The Cell of Dreams, a landmark achievement in both Shackleton and Waclaw Zimpel's respective discographies. Shackleton has been gradually widening his range of inspirations from strange club music into meditative suites influenced by post-punk. You could still hear his extraordinary rhythmic ideas on albums like Devotional Songs with Ernesto Tomasini, or hear the fearless creativity when he juxtaposed electronic music with spoken word and chant on Sferic Ghost Transmits, featuring Vengeance Tenfold. Polish artist Wacław Zimpel started out playing free jazz with musicians like Ken Vandermark and Evan Ziporyn. Later, he got into minimalism and Carnatic-inspired music with the group Saagara. In recent years, he's tuned into electronic music. On Train Spotter, released this spring, he created pulsating electronic techno based on the sounds of the city of Warsaw (and he's also collaborated with James Holden and Rabih Beaini).
Zimpel and Shackleton joined forces for the first time on Primal Forms in 2020—three multi-layered tracks based on ritualistic, Fourth World-inspired trance music. On In The Cell Of Dreams, the duo stretch out into nearly an hour over four extended tracks, like mantras based on cycles that ebb and flow through runtimes of ten to 20 minutes each.
The metallic wheeze at the start of "The Ocean Lies Between Us" is interspersed with acid squelches and samples of flowing water, lined with low-key beat loops that emerge forebodingly around minute four. The music here smolders imperceptibly, and it feels removed from most genres either artist has ever been associated with. If Zimpel uses a clarinet, it’s far from jazz, for example. You can hear the looped frenetic phrases of the instrument in the finale of "Everything Must Decay," where it gets lost in a cloud of synth fog. Even the influences from traditional music are so shredded apart or mashed together that we don’t get any apparent fusion folk-electronic collage. Instead, those skeletons are buried underneath the constantly pulsating layers of electronics and manipulated woodwinds.
In The Cell of Dreams also heavily features Siddhartha Belmannu, a vocalist from Bengaluru trained in carnatic classical music whose voice ranges over three octaves. His powerful voice, with lyrics in English and Kannada, sounds effortlessly musical. The lengthy, multisyllabic phrases lend sacred overtones to the music, hiding a mysterious tale spun beneath the dreamy, rippling drones. In the finale, against a backdrop of piano alone and a subtle streak of melody, Belmannu showcases the sheer power of his voice. "Relics of Our Past" sounds a bit like Jon Hassell or late-period Talk Talk, with Belmannu's vocals hovering over the only rhythmic moment on the album, tying together this ephemeral but compelling tale of transience. That’s the essence of the trio's collaboration: timeless and evocative suites that seem to stretch on forever and disappear all at the same time.
Tracklist01. The Ocean Lies Between Us
02. Your Love Pours Like Water
03. Everything Must Decay
04. Relics Of Our Past