Agathe Max, Shadoww, United Kingdom, self-released, limited edition cassette (2023)
Active in the experimental / improv music scene since 2006 at least, French violinist Agathe Max surprisingly has a small number of solo albums to her name so recent solo work “Shadoww” might come as a pleasant shock to her followers. Max currently performs as a member of former This Heat drummer Charles Hayward’s experimental pop group Abstract Concrete which released its self-titled debut album back in November this year, so the appearance of “Shadoww” so soon after this other album might come as a double surprise as well.
Nevertheless “Shadoww” is an intriguing recording of dark mystery, intended to be more or less continuous over nine tracks of music ranging from electroacoustic ambient to outright beats-based electronic experimentation. While violin does appear, it’s usually overshadowed by the electronics Max uses along with stomp boxes and loop station pedals. A few tracks like “In Bliss, Joy and Abundance” have beats and rhythms but even there the music spreads and expands without regard for keeping in time or harmonising with any structuring that appears. The result is that the beats and rhythms follow their own, often quite quirky paths and the bulk of the music ends up being ethereal and heavenly in orientation.
The entire recording has a very rich, almost burning radiant sound, and at a pinch could be described as darkly psychedelic. Some of the music does sound a bit heavy-handed where perhaps some delicacy could be called for but I understand the music is based on what Max on her Bandcamp page describes as “shadow work”, a form of psychological therapy, championed by self-help writer / speaker Louise Hay (1926 – 2017), in which one works with one’s own unconscious mind to uncover parts of the personality that are being repressed or hidden and which might be holding back development, so bringing out as much of the emotion and feeling that may be inherent in the music may have been a primary objective. As the music passes from one track to the next with barely a short blip to let listeners know that they’re hearing a new track, the atmosphere undergoes a fairly sharp yet seamless change, and sometimes the music itself changes dramatically as with “Breathing with Fire” which is the first of a sequence of heavily electronic instrumental beat-based songs.
The first half of the album tends to be more flowing, sprawling and radiant trippy ambient while the second half from “Breathing with Fire” onwards appears more experimental, curious and noisier, and seems a bit more self-absorbed in general orientation. There is fun to be had here with tracks like “Bugg TV” which have an inquisitive attitude of seeing how far particular sounds or sequences can be taken, even if this means going down a giant amusement park slide into an endless labyrinth. The final track “Shadoww” is a bonus track that comes with the digital release only, it does not appear on the cassette release, but it’s worth hearing for the noisy, swirling, almost power electronics nature of the music beneath which voice recordings intone therapeutic instructions.
For music inspired by psychological therapy aimed at digging out what is hidden and may potentially be upsetting, even traumatic, “Shadoww” turns out to be a fun and highly varied journey through very trippy electronics experimentation.