The work of prolific Los Angeles producer M. Geddes Gengras is often discussed in terms of “vibes.” This is fair enough, given the wandering modular synth experiments for which he’s known (not to mention his warmer forays into dub alongside Sun Araw, and his stated late-blooming appreciation for the Dead). Lest such language imply a relaxed sort of grooviness, however, his latest full-length—a double LP comprising four barely-discrete compositions, each around 18 minutes—extends into more anxious territory.
Composed and recorded over the last six years, Interior Architecture is so expansive that it can be hard for the listener to find her footing. What’s rewarding, in addition to the lush and liquid sound of Gengras’ indulgent approach, is that very experience of instability. It’s more pronounced than in his previous releases, and here takes on a psychological dimension.
“Wings_Carroms_Fountain_Worm Suite Pt. 1” opens with a foreboding tone, ringing out and slowly layered. Its effect is almost orchestral, with tinny scrawls of metallic textures. The sounds stretch and groan, eventually receding and leaving us with a tumbling rhythm that approximates water dripping in a cave, earthly and unsettling. Those contradictory sounds accumulate, and that’s where unease creeps in. This buildup process reiterates throughout, though there are moments of reprieve: the second track, “Staircase_Pressure Reverie_Structure_Worm Suite Pt 2.,” begins with a forgiving exhale, nodding back to the New Age calm of Gengras’ last proper full-length, 2014’s Ishi. Even still, about four minutes in, a cozy ambient patch is met with discordant piano and mechanical shuffling.
Taking his time to build and disassemble each passage, Gengras seems to work without many constraints. As his compositions develop out, there’s an experiential and pleasure-taking quality to his application of new progressions, even when they’re wholly dissonant. Outside of this project, he collaborates with a number of Los Angeles musicians, but here he’s very much working alone, a fact that underscores the interiority audible throughout. This is briefly disrupted by the introduction of Seth Kasselman on clarinet on “Extension_Breath_Worm Suite Pt. 3,” an element that, though it enters and exits in appropriately abstract squelches, contrasts somewhat curiously with the album’s vocabulary. Gengras otherwise comfortably and loosely fills out space, lost in what he’s making.
It’s a bit funny that he’s used the term “architecture” to title this album, which might imply a tangible presence of organizing systems. Such systems—though they’re floating around somewhere, built into the synthesizers he uses to compose these tracks—are here elusive. That groundlessness and the patience it requires can be frustrating, especially spread across nearly 80 minutes of music; the record is not always as engaging for the listener as it might like to be. Gengras emphasizes the experience of sound over the process of constructing it. With that, the brainy nature of his instrument (something he expressed better on this year’s more restrained Two Variations) is superseded by intuition, by feeling his way through sound—by vibes, you could say, albeit distinctively thorny ones.
