Remember that first scene in Akira, when the polychrome luminescence of the bike gang’s motorcycles crown the Indonesian jegog backbone of the moment’s sensorial constellation? As the glittering neoteny delivers us into a striated future, the synthesized percussion shoots us back into the past in a gesture of strong messianism. This muddle of temporality, this memory in vivo, emerging through exposure, wreathed by chugging drums and the twinkle of treble, registers once more in Tomaga’s latest gargle.
Across its sloshing surface, we drift and ebb, sloshed and convoluting in the thick of motive and motion. The time comes in with the tide and purls into pools. We lapse into and lap up the labyrinthine timeslide. Rudderless but not quite inert, we motor through the rich timbres of wood and water. Borne but graced with no bearing, we’re not bored because we’re too busy navigating. Divalence & repetition. In this mush, where there’s no doldrums and no squall either, we try to triangulate but can only aleate. And linger here we do.
A limited-edition 12-inch of Tomaga’s Memory In Vivo Exposure is out Friday, December 8 on Hands in The Dark.