If there is a definitive sound for a fleeting memory, Jay Bodley found it and put it on December, his late-2011 release under the moniker A Setting Sun. Harnessing the power of Max/MSP and Ableton Live, Bodley deconstructed field recordings and samples of his mother’s piano into slowly emerging vignettes of unearthly beauty. It’s like seeing someone walk toward you just over the horizon with the sun at their back, their form distinguishable yet blurred by rolling waves of heat-induced refraction across the vanishing point, or like dreaming of such an occurrence and trying to remember it the next day at brunch, the details spiraling out of grasp more quickly than they can be recalled.
The recording process for December charts Bodley’s journey from Brooklyn to Blackburg and finally back to his hometown of Ann Arbor. This sense of uneasiness, of not being quite comfortable in one’s current surroundings while weaving wistful yearnings for the old hometown, can be felt throughout the album. Indeed, this is thoroughly ambient music, but the organic timbres flowing betwixt and between the layers of atmospheric drone tell a much deeper story than one may anticipate by the more utilitarian expectations of the genre.
December is an album of transition, of being lost and finding the way back to a safe place, not mere relaxation. It’s evocative and thoughtful stuff.
More about: A Setting Sun
