Lucid Anarchy is an album in search of itself. Unlike Oratorio for the Underworld, it offers more textures than beats, more questions than answers, and more experience than clarity. Pyur sets out on a path of self-discovery but instead finds awe.
Everything is open to interpretation, beginning with Pyur’s own cover. Is this an image of a maelstrom in the sky, or a terrifying angel, a seraph come to witness or to judge? The titles, too, suggest opposites but are often skewed: lucid is not the antonym of anarchy, but it could be. The same is true of “Night / Sea,” while the punctuation of “Ripples, Inner Outer” affects the read.
The album does, however, proceed from abstraction to form, although it is not completely abstract at the start or completely structured at the end. Instead, the gradual addition of rhythms and beats suggest the coalescing of knowledge or the forming of identity. Sometimes wisdom is learning which questions to ask. The liner notes list “a period of personal and emotional upheaval” and an ultimate inability to know one’s self fully, despite moments of connection with a chaotic universe.
One yearns for these signals to break through: glimpses of meaning, represented in short segments of accessibility. Opening tracks “Delta” (a river that divides into before flowing into the sea) and “Intersections” suggest diverging paths, mirrored by a fracturing of sound. “Ripples, Inner Outer” begins with a clock beat pulse that also splinters, like an insight too great to grasp for more than a moment. The first obvious growth spurt occurs at 1:51 of “Night / Sea,” as percussion contributes the promise of lucidity. Yet this too is a trick of the ear, ending precisely 90 seconds later; Pyur’s title is not a single word, but an acceptance of dueling forces. The center of “Azur Wake” also toys with club sensibilities before relaxing the beats and drifting back into a more nebulous form.
Such moments increase as the album continues, although never throughout an entire track; the energy increases in the first two-thirds of “Windings on a Charged Wave,” then the second half of “Moving, Not Knowing” and the first half of the closing “Nectar.” In these segments, Pyur sounds fully alive. Has she found what is been looking for, or at least a framework in which to place her questions? The struggle is apparent, as is the progress; she has not tamed chaos, but made peace with it, content for now with lucid anarchy. (Richard Allen)
a closer listen 