Foton’s debut is a sound collage in negative, a modern take on musique concrète that blends with its listeners’ surroundings in a manner that equally complements and cancels out the ambient noise. It is quiet enough to allow the sounds of cars honking and people chattering into the listening experience, yet at times manages to filter them all out with loud sample swells and abrupt instrumental passages.
Described as an album recommended if you like “the inside of your eyelids on a sunny day”, the kind of description that we see a bit too often when promoting albums and rarely makes sense, however, it hits the nail right on the head with regards to Omega. The color spots appearing out of nothing, like fireflies buzzing late at night, penetrating the otherwise uninhabited landscape to animate the inanimate much like the manner in which the music evolves throughout the thirty minute duration of the album.
Split into two parts with the first four tracks serving as a prelude to the final fifteen minute opus that is “In the Open Space”. Each track builds up to unveil more of Foton’s musical persona; the meticulous choice of samples, the timing at which each is introduced and allowed to leave without warnings of neither all work to aid the album in encapsulating the listener in the album’s mood. This culminates in penultimate track “Slope 7F”, arguably the strongest track on the cassette, which features the strongest use of this click and cut manner of sampling that brings to mind great works of recent years such as Marcus Fjellström’s Schattenspieler and Radian’s Futura. The album ends almost in the same manner, yet with subtler ups and downs and rounds up Omega perfectly.
This is an album best experienced in loud spaces, allow the music to mingle with the surroundings; take it for a walk, spend time with it in different locations and it will reveal itself as an extremely multidimensional work that shape shifts to cope and add to each occasion; a debut that will leave its listeners definitely wanting more. (Mohammed Ashraf)
a closer listen 