It's difficult to place exactly where Californian musician Tim Gray is trying to position the music he records under his Ethernet alias. On last year's Into the Woods, there was more reliance on the twitchy beats he sometimes slides under the type of sombre, drone-oriented work he mapped out on his Kranky debut, 144 Pulsations of Light. Generous cracks of warmth were opening up in Gray's music, moving him a half-step away from the chilly environs that had previously enveloped him. On Opus 2, which reunites him with Kranky, he's firmly back in the world of Pulsations, creating a set of tracks that feel like a freezing wind has blown over them. Time and place might be a factor. The album was recorded over a Pacific Northwest winter, during a period when he was working night shifts providing technical support for hospital operating rooms. The feeling of being removed from reality burns through the album, as you'd expect from music recorded under such circumstances. At times it feels cut off from humanity altogether, with Gray locked into a deeply contemplative, utterly inward-looking journey.
Opus 2 may be a solitary work, but it does have some distant companions, mostly from a small band of fellow solo musicians. Tim Hecker, Grouper, and Wolfgang Voigt under his Gas alias have all inhabited similarly desolate places. It's all rolling clouds, amorphous surfaces, and a strong sense of pining that underpins every move. Those moves are slow, sometimes beautiful, especially when Gray stretches subtle countermelodies under his purposefully fuzzy framework. The lighter synth tones on "Monarch" make it sound like a cut from the Knife's Silent Shout that has been slowed down to a languid crawl. It's by far the warmest track on Opus 2, but still one that feels like Gray had to forsake everything around him in order to extract its refined grace. There's nothing else here that returns to a similar point, again suggesting that he hasn't quite got around to coloring in the bigger picture for Ethernet. Leaving the project in aesthetic flux is fine, too, but it does break a gloomy spell that would likely elevate this work if it was cast over a full album in its entirety.
Finding material to lose yourself in is key here-- Gray even describes the music as "improvised sonic meditations," which are designed as part of his "trancework (or self-hypnosis) practice." When it works, such as on the contemplative "Correction", it's like exploring a series of caves that reveal many more layers and markings than you ever expected. Gray has a knack for depth, for burying barely perceptible material in his work that only transpires after multiple plays and close-up listening. The hiss that blankets "Dog Star" detracts from some of those moments on initial plays, sometimes even threatening to overwhelm the track altogether. That's where Opus 2 disconnects from more placid pieces in this field. There's a brittle edge to it, sidling toward unease at times. You can blank out the world to "Dog Star", but it doesn't deposit you in a place of rest. Instead, there's a creeping sense of anxiety to it, a feeling of troubled thoughts seeping into the stillness.
There's plenty of similar sentiment spread throughout this record, and acres of room in which to explore it; none of the six tracks dip below the seven-minute mark. But at this point there should be a better idea of the overall direction Gray wants to take Ethernet in. At times, the primitive, electronic sound of "Dodecahedron" attempts to emulate Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85-92, but it's too vast a leap from the swirling darkness that gathers around a track like "Correction". Of course, the sense of remote isolation this album feeds off doesn't just generate one mood, one train of thought, one place to dwell in. But there needs to be a firming up of the bridges being built-- if not an overall Ethernet "sound" then at least a sense of connections being hammered out to bind Gray's disparate inclinations. Fortunately, Opus 2 ends on a high. The ever-repeating figures of "Pleroma" are where the album peaks, in a glassy elegy that sweeps away everything before it with its infinite weight and heightened ambition, opening up a trail that Gray would be wise to further scrutinize.
