Bleep

All My Circles Run marks a stylistic turning point for Sarah Davachi — but only in part. The Canadian composer has always been one for patience, allowing for her vast drone compositions — as refreshingly simple as they are painstakingly detailed — to ebb and flow seemingly of their own accord. Her fourth full-length album eschews the synthesised timbres she previously explored and pulls a harder emphasis on the acoustic elements, delivering pieces which delve into the deep materiality of wood, steel and the human larynx.

Every ounce of each instrument is felt from the beginning; droning strings creak and rustle on ‘For Strings’, and yet the bellowing drone feels boundless across an unbroken sonic horizon. The same can be said about ‘For Voice’, which recalls the elemental hypnotism of Holger Czukay and Rolf Dammers’ Canaxis 5 with a great deal more focus and precision in invoking a kind of quantum transcendence; everywhere and nowhere, all at once. ‘Chanter’ is the lone outlier to the LP, a steadily decaying piano phrase — a loop, or some masterfully languid playing — invoking ascendence by constantly withholding its release.

Returning to vinyl after an initial limited run in 2017, All My Circles Run is an achingly beautiful work, and perhaps the first to feel the full force of Davachi’s unique ethos.