Something insinuating and unsettling thrums beneath all of Brian Leeds’ work: a paranoid, minor-key mystery, as if leering pairs of eyes were emerging from the digital crackles and sub-bass swells that define his brand of ambient. His music as Huerco S. throws us enough swooning pads and symmetrical kick drums to maintain at least some connection, however abstract, to the reassuring pulse of the club. His work as Pendant gets that out of the way in order to smear black paint across the canvas. Anything rhythmic is inevitably frayed, anything harmonic is buried in layers of digital wind, and the usual reassurances of ambient music no longer apply.
To All Sides They Will Stretch Out Their Hands, the Kansas producer’s second album under the Pendant name, was made mere weeks after 2018’s Make Me Know You Sweet. Sweet was full of chattering, insectoid sounds that seemed to slither up the listener’s ear, but the impression on To All Sides is of an eerie, remote stillness. The first three tracks average about 10 minutes in length, and none of them end up far from where they started, least of all opener “Dream Song of the Woman,” 11 minutes of the kind of billowing wind-tunnel noise Windy & Carl usually reserve for the depths of their own albums. This is ambient at its most horizontal, and you may wonder if Leeds hasn’t abandoned his usual curlicues to make something to sit back and float away on.
No chance. “The Story of My Ancestor the River” crashes through the middle of the album like the rotting floorboards of an attic suddenly giving way. This is a turbulent, violent track, each individual clatter and squeak jostling for space, everything clad in a thick armor of distortion. It sounds a little like Oneohtrix Point Never’s “Nil Admirari,” but Daniel Lopatin at least had the good grace to put that onslaught at the beginning of Returnal as a trial by fire before the listener could get to the ambient goodies. “The Story of My Ancestor the River”' is sequenced smack-dab in the middle of the album, so anyone who dares doze off to “Dream Song” is in for a nasty shock.
“The Story of My Ancestor the River” readies our ears for the album’s second half, where a lot more happens minute to minute. “The Poor Boy and the Mud Ponies” is the most Huerco-like track here, with the faintest ghost of a beat skittering in and out of the mix. “Sometimes I Go About Pitying Myself While I Am Carried by the Wind Across the Sky” at first gives the impression of an impenetrable blankness, but listen closely and you’ll hear revving motorcycles, perturbed baby-like cries, and all sorts of weird and wet sounds moving in and out of spasms of echo. Nothing happens again at the same pitch of intensity as “The Story of My Ancestor the River,” but once we’ve learned what this album’s capable of, we prick up our ears like prey animals looking for movement—and we can go back to those earlier tracks and feel tension rather than calm.
It seems like a frustrating way to sequence an album, letting us float downstream on the first three tracks before abruptly casting us into the rapids. But it preempts the possibility that any of this music will simply drift to the edges of consciousness, and you may find yourself paying attention even when nothing seems to be happening. When ambient music trades in suspense, we don’t necessarily expect a payoff; sustaining an ominous mood is usually more than good enough. On To All Sides They Will Stretch Out Their Hands, Leeds tempts us with the possibility that something will happen—and then when something does happen, we come to the delighted realization that on a Pendant album, just about anything can.
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