DAFAKE - Suture

 Released: May 28

With some noise albums, slow and subtle is not necessarily the order of the day. But the latest from DAFAKE is built entirely of slow and seething subtlety down to the most minute fragments of sound. It’s quite interesting that this is the theme considering it is entirely composed through live improvisation in a no-input setup. The setup isn’t one hundred percent clear but it certainly sounds like something on the more minimal side of things, squeezing as many sounds and textures out of a couple of pieces as possible to great effect. The album is decided dark in tone with the improvisational notes shining through nicely with sporadic rhythmic structures popping up intermittently. “Stitch VI” is by far the most rhythmically driven of all the pieces in this collection featuring a surprisingly deep bass tone throughout its short runtime. It thumps and wobbles in close time with the higher pieces and provides a particularly well-balanced counterweight against the screeching highs that come in later. 

Sutures is an album with just a few variables producing a wide range of tones and erratic structures. Much of it is highly atmospheric The first few tracks feature little to no rhythmic structure. And if it is present, it comes through as rather tenuous, like small clicks and hits attached to a frayed shoestring and going in an uneven circle. “Stitch III” is a good example of this type of motif with its frail sounding high-pitched percussive tones creating a patchwork rhythm of soft hums and small pieces of short crackling noises. This motif continues throughout the album until “VI” which brings in more fleshed out percussive textures with deep bass hits and a generally heavier tone as proposed to the lighter and more softly atmospheric. But the album ends itself on a tired combination of these motifs with “VIII,” which takes those airier ideas and melds then with the deep and resonant tones and melds them together into a dark and erratic soundscape. It takes the most intense aspects of the album and throws them all at us right before ending abruptly, quite fittingly.