Time Rival - Sky Blue, Pale Rose

 Released: October 28

On his latest album, Time Rival (Michael Southard) gives us a collection of musical pieces that he describes as a wordless musical poem with nine stanzas. This description lives up to the music contained here as each track drifts us in new yet slightly familiar territory that bounces around in the middle space between ambient and downtempo. “Culvert” opens the album up with a hazy and fuzzy tone that sounds like the percussion peeking its head out into a rainy city street. The atmosphere on this track is something to marvel at honestly. It maintains this sense that the music is simply poking out from the ambient sounds of an overcast and rainy cityscape while also incorporating other field recording atmospherics into its arrangement. While a lot of the other pieces here utilize bits of field recordings, none do so extensively and to such poignancy. 

Time Rival’s music haas always had his penchant for discrete and slightly dusty drum sounds and Sky Blue, Pale Rose keeps with this motif well. “Behind the Bookshelf” takes a very minimalist approach the drums in this respect, featuring just a couple of pieces of percussion but with some heavy and well-utilized reverb and delay that gives the percussion a highly unique character as the snare bounces about like a rubber ball on marble flooring. But even with this affinity for unique drums, Southard takes opportunities to eschew them in favor of lush and odd ambient sculptures of sound like on the soft reflective surfaces of “Farewell, Henry McApplebee’s.” The track is simple in its approach containing what sound like just two heavily processed instruments and this recurring moment of audible clatter that seems to promise a rhythm dropping in, but then disappears entirely until it repeats later on. It kind of threw me off at first, but as I continued listening, I could appreciate the way in which it contrasted with the more beat-driven pieces on the album. 

Overall, it’s a quite relaxing listen. Southard takes opportunities to experiment while also keeping close to what he knows well. The more ambient and beat-less tracks on here tend to come around the end of the album, which makes for a wonderful dynamic and makes the album feel rather poetic indeed as we hear things wrapped up gently in soft pads and blurry tones.