Veil
Daryl Worthington
, April 7th, 2021 08:14
Opal Tapes founder Stephen Bishop and avant-turntablist Mariam Rezaei make audible the latency of a socially distanced world for Daryl Worthington
Early cinema-goers were more fascinated by the background action of dust, leaves, and crowds than what happened in the foreground, so a popular anecdote goes. Minds were blown by the camera’s ability to capture these incidental movements. Transfixed, for instance, by spooky actions of steam from a locomotive instead of whatever was happening to the train itself.
My ears follow a similar path with Stephen Bishop and Mariam Rezaei’s
Veil, tracing the odd choreography of sounds within these glitching tracks. On opener ‘Voul’, an orchestra gently unravels with a stumbling gait while whirs and drones hover in the distance. Zoom out and the piece elegantly builds to a hyperactive crescendo, zoom in and there’s a universe of movements within the movement. The title track and ‘Ab