Annie Aries
It’s Not Quiet in The Void
SWITZERLAND EVEREST RECORDS er_117 LP (2024)
This is Annie Rüfenacht currently based in Bern University of the Arts, where she studied for her masters in Music and Media Arts, and is now a member of the teaching faculty. Plus she studied at Humboldt University in Berlin, digging into the contested zones that lie between experimental music and popular culture, especially club culture.
Well, now working under the name “Annie Aries” – a nickname which would have been equally welcome in the Haight-Ashbury in 1967 or at Studio 54 in 1977 – she’s produced this LP using her own instrument, a modular synthesizer built to her own custom specs. She’s aiming to combine her appreciation of techno, dance music, and minimal electronica with her own experimental practices, albeit the results are not quite as formal or academic as certain contemporary electro-acoustic composers. It’s Not Quiet in The Void does tend towards the more minimal, dark-ambient influenced end of the spectrum, but there is much intelligence and careful planning detectable in the arrangement and programming of these single-minded pieces; a lot of depth and perspective is realised in her imaginary alien-corridor type spaces, and Annie Aries never once settles for a mindless textured drone, leaving her cabin crew to run on autopilot. This is also evident in the many moods and atmospheres suggested by these abstracts; from calm contemplation to a troubled and unsettled frame of mind, the listener must pass the gamut of emotional responses.
On today’s spin I found much solace in the serenity of ‘Solitaire’, while also enjoying a 3D game of chess with the robot aliens on ‘JJG4260N’. (Spoiler alert: they are programmed so that humans cannot beat them.) Mimi Kind, in her liner notes, also perceives an interesting slant on how this music distorts our perception of perspective: “things appear distant, suddenly in front, only to settle far off”, and you only have to pick out some of her keywords – “intangible”, “revelation”, “unknowing”, “immense” – to garner a flavour of the achievements of this record. I’m less persuaded by Mimi Kind’s florid metaphor of “sound…like liquid…rolls slowly down your arm, thick like molasses, and some streams rapidly off your limbs”, although this vivid image does invoke the immersive quality of the music of Annie Aries. Pressed in pink vinyl. Arrived 2nd January 2024.