Heavy Cloud - Anatomy of Stillness

 Released: October 9

Bringing us another masterfully constructed sound collage, Ryan Hooper continues his primary project under the name of Heavy Cloud with this odd contribution to his discography. Anatomy of Stillness is divided into two parts - “Vox Memoriae” and “Cassette Catherdral.” Both tracks have an interesting tendency to shift between the collated noises of contact mics and field recording to this oddly melodic and peaceful motif that features heavily the metallic tones of a kalimba. While Hooper work never truly eschew some more melodic elements, the prominence of these moments as compared to the others stands out on this release. 

The first of these two tracks feels quite like a disjointed slice of life piece. We begin with metallic textures that shuffle about and give us few clues about where we may be. However, the scene shifts into faint voices and unclear conversations along with a continued ambient noise that persists through. This is a regular theme for Heavy Cloud as he presents us with these unclear scenes that meander from one to the next without a great deal of clarity. I always found this approach to be wonderfully intriguing as it never allows the audience to have that clear pictures, opting instead to force us to put this picture together ourselves, even as it dramatically shifts. 

The second piece of the album is even hazier as it opens up to a thick fog of ambient noises that obscure the more clear details. A distorted and slowed voice attempts to narrate an unknown scene or subject as that hurried clatter of metallic objects comes in. Midway through, the ambient noises becomes a crunchy and low fidelity hiss falls away suddenly to give room to some type of twangy string instrument. Again, here the scenes shift without warning but there are also less of the human elements such as the indistinct conversation to ground the listener into the real world, sending us into an abstract puzzle that crumbles around it. It’s certainly the complexity we’ve come to expect from Heavy Cloud as he continues to push the foundations of his audible environments.