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A Clinging Fog, Dissipating

by Benjamin Mettey

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1.
Eccoci Qui 05:07
2.
Onde di Vita 04:58
3.
Nel Profondo 03:57
4.
Soporifera 07:55
5.
Decadimento 07:20
6.
7.
Avvolgere 25:13

about

There’s a sense of the exploratory in “A Clinging Fog, Dissipating,” the new album by Massachusetts-based sound artist Benjamin Mettey. Each song in the collection feels like a journey in miniature.

And perhaps this is fitting for an album of so many firsts for Mettey. First full-length LP. First recording released under his own name (after retiring the decade-long moniker Min (min-music.bandcamp.com). First recording working in a new style, making the songs tighter and more polished than in the past. A project, then, of abandoning the comfortable and traditional in favor of the unknown.

The delicate, arpeggiated “Eccoci Qui” builds to a motive, adventurous double-time colored by mysterious chord changes: a true voyaging song. “Nel Profondo” is halved by a rising, almost airless peak, from which the song’s themes emerge, intact but changed. On the arresting, gorgeous “Decadimento,” the journey steers inward, turning the end of forms (the title is Italian for “decay”) into an occasion for the sublime.

With sources as varied as Patrick Modiano, Kosmische Musik, and Mario Bava, “A Clinging Fog, Dissipating,” shows an artist charting new topographies of emotional and artistic experience. For listeners in 2022, who must constantly confront the unknown, it’s a recording that feels as timely as it is comforting.



The album artwork was created using a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). The process, an example of machine learning, generated the image using OpenAI’s unconditional ImageNet diffusion model with Contrastive Language-Image Pretraining or CLIP (github.com/openai/CLIP) and the prompt “Crystalline Cloud Forest”. This was made possible thanks to a process shared by researcher Katherine Crowson, @RiversHaveWings on twitter.

credits

released January 21, 2022

All songs conceived and performed by Benjamin Mettey on modular synthesizer, with some computer intervention.

Recorded and mixed at The Cathedral of Tomorrow, Minneapolis, MN and Springfield, MA 2019-2021

Mastering and cover art by Jesse Whitney

Special thanks to Mohammed Ashraf for translation assistance

Thank you: Cathy and Lucy, Brad Mettey, Jesse Whitney, Charles Hainsworth, Chris LeBlanc, Julka Almquist, Michael Champ, Jesse Dineen, Matthew Jatkola, Luke Kirkland, and Anthony Vecchi

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all rights reserved

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Æther Sound Minneapolis, Minnesota

electronic sounds to peel open your mind
--
Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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