 photo courtesy of Cornelia Thonhauser The collaborative debut of American minimal techno pioneer Troy Pierce and Colombian audiovisual artist Natalia Escobar aka Poison Arrow was conceived in reverse: first they created a collection of shadowy surrealist videos, then wrote music inspired by them. This inverted process proved remarkably fruitful. Shatter is a simmering, slow-burn noir odyssey inspired by the Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus, traversing subtle shades of sleepwalker dub, metallic lament, broken beats, and erotic negative space. It's an effectively unsettling evocation of the legend's core theme: “There is nothing more complex than a shattered heart, or a heart that can't love.”
Considering their shared background trafficking in darkened dance floor modes, what's most striking about Pierce with Arrow's partnership is its rhythmic restraint. The album's 10 tracks seethe and shudder between glamor and gloom, with only occasional dread-steeped metronomes mapping the malaise to a grid. They speak of pursuing a “spatial approach” with this project, which manifests in the music's immersive design and patient execution, each mangled clang and rippling pool of bass allowed to reverberate its full flickering waveform.
Guest appearances by austere techno producer Konrad Black (“Obsidian Glass”) and drum n bass institution dBridge (“It's A Love Story, After All”) flow seamlessly into the whole, subtle sculptural accents on a dimly lit descent through purgatories of longing and lust. But the shadows recede for the record's closing cut, “Narcissus,” which swells elegiacally in a mass of devotional drones over a muted heartbeat, like Narcissus gazing upon his reflection in holy awe: elusive true beauty, finally beheld, by itself.
Watch the video for the first single below, the duo had this to say about the track and video: “In the Depths Of His Eyes proposes a reconfigured narcissism; a reimagining of Narcissus’ gaze into the pool, beyond self-absorption and vanity, to a moment of intrigue on the edge of introspection. Diving into the depths of the never-ending fall through states of transformation and re-creation.”
About:Troy Pierce is best known for his minimal techno productions in the early 2000’s, which include three studio albums, ten e.p.’s, and more than twenty remixes for artists including Depeche Mode, Juan Atkins, and The Knife. He was a co-founder of the label “Items & Things”, along with fellow artists Magda and Marc Houle, and is one half of the experimental techno duo “Louderbach”, alongside Gibby Miller. Natalia Escobar’s interdisciplinary output invokes moods of haunting melancholy, inspired by the dark side of love and desire. Her musical alter ego “Poison Arrow” uses hypnotic rhythms paired with provocative vocals in an interpretation of traditional Colombian cultural tropes. Her first EP under this moniker ‘If You Don’t Love me (I’ll Cut Your Face)” was released on dBridge’s Pleasure District Label. Natalia also remixed Mathew Jonson’s seminal track Decompression, released on his Freedom Engine label. Pierce with ArrowShatterDais Records
February 19, 2021LP / Digital1. Echo
2. Dissolving to a Voice
3. She Pined Away
4. Obsidian Glass (ft. Konrad Black)
5. A Tight Passage
6. His Rejection
7. The Night is Ending
8. In the Depths of His Eyes
9. It’s a Love Story, After All (ft. dBridge)
10. Narcissus -- |
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