In Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 2021 film Memoria, Tilda Swinton’s protagonist awakens in the middle of the night to a loud, startling sound with no clear source. The sound seems to follow her around in the days after, repeating at random intervals, but only she can hear it—a mystery that sends her on a journey deep into the Colombian jungle for answers. What she hears, a single note, is jarring and strangely physical, a sort of sonorous thud. It’s also a little musical, like industrial equipment accidentally clanking out a chord, shaking everything around it at a resonant frequency that’s more intriguing than terrifying. Similarly disruptive bass notes are all over Carmen Villain’s latest album, also called Memoria, which takes the bright, fourth-world sound of her recent music—featuring her own clarinet, as well as flute (Johanna Orellana) and trumpet (Eivind Lønning)—and turns it stoic and steely, with recognizable sounds peeking out through the digital muck like brief flashbacks. Every time it locks into a groove, something changes, as those persistent low notes puncture the music like perforations in an old film reel.
Slow and metallic—a bit like Andy Stott’s knackered house, or Actress’ most lethargic, bitcrushed beats—Memoria initially reads like a sharp departure from Villain’s last album. That 2022 LP, Only Love From Now On, was her breakthrough, revealing a gift for subtle melody and for drifting, beatless arrangement. It was welcoming, painted in pastel hues with breathy tones, and all-encompassing, touching on fourth world, jazz, electronica, and dance music without letting any one sound define it. The transition from singer-songwriter to polymath composer was complete. Memoria begins with the now familiar woodwinds, but quickly turns darker, with the slow, hulking rhythm of “Entre Nosotros” arranged around one of those big, blobby bass notes.
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“Entre Nosotros” is monochrome compared to the almost naturalistic beauty of Villain’s past work, like construction equipment erected over what was once a verdant valley. Occasionally the electronic rhythms fade away, making room for what sounds like clumsy guitar strumming, an old folk song locked in the recesses of Villain’s memory, until it’s all you can hear: fuzzy, a little warm, vaguely haunting. The acoustic instruments on Memoria are like beams of light, adding life to the album’s otherwise cold, mechanistic sound. “Hey Synapses” loops layers of flute into a brittle tapestry that feels like it might disintegrate at the touch, a bit like vintage Jan Jelinek. And on “Blue,” Orellano’s flute adds a distinct tinge of fear, tracing paranoid circles over a staggered beat, like a feeling of encroaching dread you can’t quite place, but can feel deep in your body.
“Blue” is the album’s energetic peak, with the best of Memoria’s basslines: an unstable, ungainly thing that glitches and wobbles on impact. It seems to displace other sounds as if it were ripping a hole in spacetime, turning everything else around it flickering and unstable, like a dub version eating the original track from the inside out. Dub is a key part of the album, and Villain’s arrangements brush up against its electronic descendants. Memoria is dub techno in the same way that Carrier’s music is dub techno (especially on the dissipated, shuddering “Holding a Shape”), a ghost haunting wheezing machinery, hydraulic earth movers and bulldozers. And the title track’s empty soundscape is choked by fluttering sub-bass that would make Mala blush, the kind of low end that used to make chestbones and teeth rattle at early dubstep nights at Plastic People. In these moments, the music’s physicality borders on terrifying, but there’s usually some switch-up around the corner that turns the bass into a warm embrace, and then back again.
