Field of Fear

When we talk about mental health in the context of creating music a narrative tends to emerge in countless press releases and reviews. The formula generally follows: Mental Anguish > Music as Processing Tool > Catharsis. This formula serves a function in the marketplace of art as commerce where mental illness is seen as a personal obstacle / trauma narrative that is overcome through a purging process i.e making a record. But talk to anyone who suffers from any chronic illness they will tell you a much bleaker story, one where catharsis is rarely achieved.

Beyond the Reach of Light by Oakland based Field of Fear is one of those albums. Its emotional input emanates from a place of deep depression. The resultant sounds - heavily processed synthesizers, guitars and samples pushed to punishing extremes that pull equally from drone, power electronics and industrial music to create something that sits uncomfortably in the venn diagram between them. The push and pull between extreme sounds is reflective of Drew Zercoe’s mental state at the time - refracted focus, instinctual and desperate moods create dynamics that never allow the listener room to fully get comfortable. Tracks like “Shadowed” contain the high drama of a bruising industrial metal song (think the driving energy of Ministry with the half-time thud of Prong) while “Cold” hints at a faint light - a melodic drone over surging sub-bass that then bleeds into the albums most unforgiving noise / drone track “Consumed”.

Much like his previous album Ashes where Zercoe used metadata from photographs of places the fires ravaging California ruined to inform the sound on that equally punishing tape, Zercoe’s field recordings around Oakland were hollowed and used to modulate different effects on this record - allowing a sense of synchronicity tied to place to prevail and nodding towards the material conditions that often exacerbate latent mental health symptoms. Zercoe’s mentor David First’s approaches to composition and LaMonte Young’s experiments in just intonation show up as red glowing lights beckoning us through the bardo as much as Boris and Suno)))’s heavy hands on Zercoe’s shoulders.

The album arrives and ends on a meditative sine wave - a nod to the looming sense that this depression, while temporarily lifted, will return as it always does. A faithful dog. Another winter. A record that has been written and will continue to be written in terminal loops. Where Beyond the Reach of Light hints towards any catharsis is that it is over. Zercoe states that he has a difficult relationship with this record - as it stands as a record of a harrowing spell of depression and doesn’t arrive at a tidy or even hopeful conclusion. The idea of pressing this onto wax aligns with the Cincinnati based record label Whited Sepulchre Record’s philosophical approach towards production. Every record is a tomb where the ghosts of our former selves live - every spin is a form of necromancy.