Thirty meters beneath the surface and I’m starting to lose it. I watch my arms flail with the tide like they belong to a stranger. The decision to dive deeper or to come back up is easy. It’s nice down here. Why leave? I am not leaving.
Having mastered a strain of kinetic technoid synthesis equally fit for the party’s twilight hours and the slow walk home down the boulevard, Ricardo Donoso dons an oxygen mask and sinks into the murky water off the coast for the first full length LP under his Scuba Death moniker.
Forty meters down. I haven’t been drinking and I haven’t been smoking and I haven’t been modulating my consciousness at all on my own but the ocean takes care of all that. My gauges are so far away and the bottom is so far away. I am ready for everything.
Donoso’s Scuba Death compositions unfold as miniature narratives animated by creeping analog thuds, obscured synth pads, and overlapped percussion patterns. His wide mixes cohere across underwater field recording interludes and swathes of near silence, while each burst of rhythm jolts our senses back to life. When we’re not asphyxiating, our heads bob. When we’re not moving, the tank drains.
Fifty to seventy meters and I just don’t remember. There’s something I should be doing. I am here watching the bubbles escape from the valve. I’m hearing pulses. I’m at peace.
Stream Nitrogen Narcosis in full below, and follow the spiral down. Donoso’s senses of momentum and structural drama guide us through dips and surges of BPM as our perceptions narrow to a pinpoint in the darkness. When the epic “The Rapture of the Deep” hits, we feel it. The hi-fi bass swells and disfigured synth squiggles vie with the hi-hats for our final moments of attention before the fade. One potential option: hit play again, and spend another 35 minutes submerged.
Nitrogen Narcosis breaches on September 1 via Seattle’s finest zone merchants Further Records. You can preorder the LP now.
• Ricardo Donoso: http://www.ricardodonoso.com
• Further Records: http://furtherrecords.org
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