Kh3rtis - In the Wake of Light

 Released: March 27

This latest album from artist and composer Kh3tis marks a bit of a deviation from his previous work. With previous albums, we could always expect something with rhythm, tight basses, and flowering guitar or synth melodies coalescing into a groove oriented setting. But this album eschews much of that in favor of something a bit more raw and emotional. At its core, In the Wake of Light is an album about loss and how to recover from it. This exploration unfolds over 12 ambient yet noise-inflected pieces that tell a vague but raw story.

The start of the albums opens up with something rather peaceful and straightforward ambient vibes complete with birds chirping and evoking a warm yellow glow of morning. But by the second track, there’s a noticeable shift. Still indelibly ambient, the tone changes into something moodier and with a slight hint of foreboding. Children’s voices can be heard at first, playfully cheering on whatever new thing has caught their attention. But the voices slowly become more distorted, glitching out severely, and becoming barely recognizable. For me, this was one of the most pivotal and consequential moments in the album. We hear this dynamic again, notably on “The Return to Motion” as the voices of hundreds of indistinct conversations echoes on in a similar glitched manner. It makes for such a surreal sense of the world passing by as one is unable to seemingly understand of participate in it. 

This hazy surrealism and sense of disassociation permeates much of the album. It is not until the final track, “Where Clarity Rests,” that this haze finally begins to break and seemingly sets us back at the beginning with that warm yellow glow and that innate sense of appreciation and contentment. It’s a rather fitting end for this collection which ties back into the beginning wonderfully. It almost makes the whole experience seem cyclical, as if it will inevitably happen again, though maybe with a slightly different path taken.