When Daniel Donchov, aka Non Photo Blue, feels out of sorts, out of
place, he can really get to the heart
of it. In his recordings he taps into unfathomable emotions with remarkable
insight, laying bare the frayed nerves of missed connections and lost
attachments while blanketing it all in an effervescent mist of synthesizer
tones and gentle field recordings. His work is depressingly ambient, yet it
manages to plant the seeds of hope and fertilize their growth with a wisdom
gleaned from heartbreaking experience. In us, the listeners, is cultivated a
sense that with each passing trauma or tribulation there exists the spark of
healing and renewal. It’s the grief that keeps on giving.
Dépaysement is the sound of longing, then, of being far from home in an unfamiliar
land and allowing the anxiety of it to overwhelm you. And that’s where it comes
from, with Donchov traveling through several U.S. states during the wild and
wistful autumn before our immaculate quarantine. The Netherlands-based Donchov
is clearly inspired by the change of seasons, but just as that change portends
winter, so too does Donchov drift into melancholy as he seemingly longs for
home while upon foreign soil. And to think that I can’t even imagine the
America that Donchov was able to see, let alone what it’s become – there is so
much unrecognizable about it, so much tragedy upon it. Surely that’s not to
place its plight above anyone else’s on a list of importance, but it still
weighs heavily on the mind.
Donchov’s Dépaysement
weighs heavily on the heart, but with the glimmering blue hope of a light
at the end of a long and lonely tunnel. Here’s to that: to something bigger
than us that we can latch onto, that we can turn our focus to and embrace with
a collective affinity. But still, it’s the dark moments like those on Dépaysement that get us through, that
cast everything into stark relief. The darkness is important too.
Sounds like an Amek release, doesn’t it? You’d be right about that.
https://amekcollective.bandcamp.com/
--Ryan
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