Aarktica
Bleeding Light
( Darla ) 2005 [ purchase direct $ ]

Spend an extended period of time in a big city, and you'll eventually get swept away by its organized chaos--the hordes of people filling the crowded sidewalks, the cacophony of noises spilling out of subways, and stores, and taxis, and open windows. Fueled by a pulsing heartbeat of movement, light, and sound, the city moves in a circadian rhythm. Think too much about the fact that you are one in the midst of millions--a tiny dot (the grand scale of it all!)--and you'll understand how easy it is to feel isolated amongst many, alone in your own head.

Jon DeRosa gets it--"We're all lost in our own way," and that sort of isolation is a theme that runs throughout Aarktica's latest--written with NYC in mind-- Bleeding Light. Experimenting with elements of jazz, shoegaze, electronics (loops and programming), and organic sound, he blends them together into something beautifully unique. By equal turns atmospheric, desolate, (the opening track, "Depression Modern," with its slowly building layers-- "I have seen this night before/Or else I made it up completely/I can never tell if I erased it/Or it erased me," feels like it's on the verge of imploding.) lush, and almost poppy, DeRosa creates drifting landscapes of sound--austere and soothing all at the same time. Mostly instrumental, the album slowly moves along on waves of droney guitars, textures, deliberate loops and rhythms, and lush instrumentation--percussion, sax, and bits borrowed from Eastern instrumentation readily apparent on the closing (and title) track, "Bleeding Light". When vocals do appear, they're wrapped in melancholy and often heavily filtered, but DeRosa's voice shines through, especially on the gorgeous "A Wash A Sea Goodbye It's Me."

Bleeding Light feels like a stream of consciousness, the individual voices silently drifting and flowing underneath the frenetic energy of the city that is often overwhelming. Take a moment and stop--listen closely and carefully--and you just might hear them.

s :: (01.05.06)