Theme - Meditations on Space, Volume One

Meditations on Space, Volume One is the seventh album by Theme, the duo of Richard Johnson and Stuart Carter, who are also members of Splintered. As Theme the pair have explored more experimental terrain, incorporating improvisation, drones, noise, and voices. However, this release takes a markedly different direction from the abrasive electronics and forceful vocals of their previous album, Sacral Blood Warning.

Unfolding as a seven-part journey through shifting textures, pulses, field recordings and audio collages, Meditations on Space, Volume One features vocals by Emma Lynch and additional sounds from Zsolt Sőrés, Hiroshimabend, and Michal Wojciechowski. In many ways, its single evolving composition shares the meditative and hypnotic qualities of Stuart Carter's solo project, The Fields of Hay, particularly their recent album A Circle of Skin. Yet Theme push their abstract electronics interlaced with voices, field recordings, and other sound sources into bleaker, hallucinogenic, and perhaps even hypnagogic realms.

The opening tracks are tranquil and sparse. 'Part One: Blood Paralysis' sets the scene with subtle pulses and nocturnal field recordings, pulling the listener into a liminal space further built upon with 'Part Two: Mouth Full of Rust' which expands into drones layered with brittle percussive taps, shuddering electronics, wordless cries and the chatter of playground children. It creates a sense of claustrophobic unease, acting as an uneasy prelude to the trippy density ahead.

'Part Three: A Way of Life (Stillborn)' pushes into harsher psychedelic territory. Repeated hiss and reverberating metallic clatter collide with warped hallucinatory voices and shifting turbulent textures which continually surface as the piece escalates into a storm of fizzing tones, distant shouts, processed voices, and jittering clicks. The fractured elements spill over into 'Part Four: To Fall Out of Time', an uneasy feverish section with a restless mix of distorted electronics, ringing pulses, crashing percussion, shrieking feedback and treated voices.

'Part Five: Fight or Flight' slips back into dreamlike realms with pulses and clatter before introducing panning acoustic guitar - a rare organic texture amid the electronics. Those acoustic guitar patterns continue to weave amid the pulses and folds of treated voices, anguished wails and bursts of noise. The result is a heady turbulent clash between dreamy acoustic flourishes and harsher electronics. The following 'Part Six: Street Prophet (Nature of Existence)' feels like a transmission breaking down in real time. Here, cyclical bursts of electronics underpin sampled preaching before everything is sheathed in noise and eventually disintegrates into scattered radio dialled voices and spacious droning noise.

The album closes on the stretched tones and wavering drones of 'Part Seven: Several Decades Lost', where mired in viola backward-processed voices sound almost ritualistic as it eventually morphs into spoken voices ruminating on time surrounded in hollow creaks, reverberations and droning shrieks. A dense finale where everything is destined to disappear leaving only decaying fragments of sound.

Meditations on Space, Volume One is difficult to categorise. Masterfully constructed, it has a dreamy flow that allows a range of sound elements to surface, creating an intriguing blend of abstract electronics, pulses, and audio collage that shifts between the nebulous and the vivid. Meditations on Space, Volume One is the first in a planned two-part set, with further variations and possibly a short film to follow. Meditations on Space, Volume One is released on CD and is available from Fourth Dimension Records