Twang. Humm. Ping. Clunk. Fin.
At least that's how it seems to me, after a few infuriating weeks of attempting to let From the Desert Came Saltwater sink in. To be fair, there's some mildly engaging ear candy to be found here; and, as the promo material suggests, the album does indeed maneuver through "full, layered sequences into spare moments of near silence and back again with ease." What isn't mentioned is that these so-called "spare" moments seem to describe all but a combined three minutes of the album's 45-minute running time, leaving the listener in a verifiable desert of electro-acoustic elevator music for the majority of Nicola Ratti's third record in as many years.
Dry, meandering guitars, mumbled vocalizing, disarmingly gentle drumming, and various laptopped glitch effects are par for the course here, naturally placing some serious expectations on the pacing and songwriting, expectations this album doesn't even attempt to fulfill. Even as an ambient piece, this album falls flat on its face; the minimalism of its production and the maximalist tendencies of Ratti's playing fight like the tweaker couple in the apartment next door, disallowing any potential moments of tranced-out ambient bliss — demanding your attention but offering very little substance to justify such demands.
Arguably the most objectionable aspect of this release is the songwriting or, as it would be unfair to the form to suggest that these tracks are in any way related to traditional songs, the utterly forgettable chord progressions that Nicola utilizes to fill out his skeletal jams. While groups like The For Carnation take similar elements (quiet, jazzy instrumentation, a late-night/early-morning atmosphere) and weave them into compelling stories and songs, Ratti runs in the opposite direction, avoiding even the slightest emotional signpost while stripping his music of meaning and any sense of purpose in what could only be either an act of utter sadism or total self-absorption.
It's the tease, though, that drove me to the breaking point with this album. The record's pace seems to suggest a glorious explosion of melody around every turn, but it only rewards your dutiful patience with some passionately random notes from Ratti's airtight guitar rig before dumping you right back into his uniquely disarming soup of incidental sounds and voices. Admittedly, the work raises some intellectually stimulating questions about Form and Ground and should be commended for inspiring such bitterness and rancor in this otherwise open-minded reviewer, but for those of us who like our music to make us feel something, From the Desert Came Saltwater ought to be enthusiastically avoided.
More about: Nicola Ratti
