It has been a banner couple of years for synthesizer music of all stripes—both enveloping excursions like Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s multidimensional epic The Kid and stripped-down investigations like Alessandro Cortini’s focused, meditative Avanti. Qasim Naqvi’s Chronology, released a year ago, fit into the latter category: Its six exacting studies of tone color and stillness were composed and recorded entirely on a temperamental Moog Model D, an analog synthesizer from the early 1970s. The Model D, also known as the Minimoog, is monophonic, which means it can only play one note at a time. But its sounds are so rich, that constraint isn’t as limiting as you might expect. Instead of availing himself of the kinds of more traditionally musical ideas that are typically facilitated by chords, Naqvi approached his sounds like a sculptor, lavishing attention on his buzzing, glistening waveforms’ texture, heft, and sheen.
Those familiar with Naqvi’s work in the jazz trio Dawn of Midi may have been struck by one notable omission on Chronology. He is a formidable drummer capable of both quartz-powered motorik grooves and expressionistic detailing in the deepest corners of the rhythmic grid. But the ambient Chronology featured no rhythms at all, or at least none steadier than the brief explosions of fibrillation generated by microtonal harmonies hovering in close proximity.
Naqvi’s new album, FILM, represents a step up in complexity. In addition to upgrading his Moog from a capricious ’70s model with a mind of its own to a more stable contemporary reissue of the instrument, he fleshed out his setup with an ARP Odyssey synthesizer and a modular rig. The result is a palette even richer than before: an array of coppery drones, gravelly bass, and sleek, impenetrable reverb marbled with the ghosts of sounds it has swallowed. The move to a modular system, with its emphasis on cycles and sequences, has allowed him finally to wade into rhythmic waters on a few tracks driven by steady pulses and rippling arpeggios. FILM is also, curiously, a more noticeably musical album than its predecessor: The opening “The Cast” is led by a stately bass progression that helps frame its wild backdrop of quivering sinewaves and sad foghorn bleats; “Sputnik” follows a curious, major-key chord progression along its graceful interstellar path. There’s a touch of melancholy retro sentiment to the latter, but the slippery tunings infuse its otherwise homey harmonies with a distinctly alien air.
The music on FILM was originally composed for a pair of soundtracks: The first six tracks were made to accompany Naeem Mohaiemen’s three-channel video installation “Two Meetings and a Funeral”; the final four are taken from the score to Mohaiemen’s film Tripoli Cancelled, the fictional account of a man stranded in an abandoned airport for 10 years. It’s easy to see how this material would work in a visual context. Influenced both by the films’ ruined architectural spaces and by classic, synthesizer-driven film scores of the 1980s, FILM toggles between pure electronic sound design and minimalist composition; it strikes a balance between suggestive scene-setting and subtle drama. It’s possible to detect traces of John Carpenter’s ominous example in brooding miniatures like “The Cast,” while the tumbling arpeggios of “Aligned” recall the playful, liquid pinging of Laurie Spiegel’s “Appalachian Grove.”
Mostly, though, the focus is on Naqvi’s expressive and unpredictable approach to shaping sound. In “The Cast,” small eruptions of tremolo gradually expand to fill the frame, a shift in scale that suggests fractal patterns. In “Algiers,” a similar process of dislocation takes place, as a reverberant crackle—the sound of moisture dripping off stalactites in a vast cavern, perhaps—gives way to the faraway drone of small planes circling high overhead, the combined vibrations creating intricate pinwheels of buzz-within-buzz. The record’s clear emotional climax comes with “Wreckage,” a sketch for arpeggio and reverb that sounds like Stars of the Lid heard through a very long train tunnel, or the Field sent plunging to the depths of the ocean. But the delicate “Mannequin” is just as moving: Each breathy, silvery tone in the track’s slow, painstaking progression feels like an existential sigh that has been frozen in midair. Like the protagonist of Tripoli Cancelled, these tracks are in no hurry to reach any particular destination. Naqvi’s carefully rendered tones make a tentative entrance, stretch their limbs, explore the ruined panorama for a short while, and slink away again, leaving little trace. Caught between accident and expression, it is a sound whose ephemerality makes it all the more haunting.
