Reclaiming the audio landscape with an exceedingly rare balance of emotional conviction and intricate attention to detail. Australian composer and ambient producer Darren Harris presents a compelling and provocative yet boldly healing audio journey, and takes on the concept of time repeating itself for all of eternity.
Blending ambient and electronic musical tones, with reflections on spirituality, psychology, and Buddhism, Eternal Return is a powerful and transfixing instrumental album, from a creative whose music continues to break down the boundaries of genre and expectation.
To begin, Waves Of You fills the space with equal parts divinity and mystique, a pulsating bassline and light rhythm countered by echoing synth notes that are ethereal but occasionally dissonant or warped on the way back down.
It’s an all-consuming listen, evolving across almost five minutes of composition, with vocal fragments chopped and echoed throughout a recognisable melody-line. The composing process here was based around capturing an upbeat mood, and so, it’s a kind of light and uplifting introduction to the album.
Soon after, we’re engulfed by the true confrontational depth and possibility of Eternal Return, as Slipped This Mortal Skin emerges, piano and contrasting electronic fuzz blending the computerised and the earthly, for a spellbinding audio journey that’s mellow but euphoric.
The true intricacy and skill of Darren Harris as producer and composer is undeniable at this point, the track both simple and complex, surrounding its audience, and utilising other-worldly sounds and organic piano chords in unison, to create a cinematic moment of escapism that’s profound and deeply serene.
A quiet back and forth ensues for Being and Becoming, written on hardware synthesizers – a siren-like looping constant, juxtaposed by gentle adlib notes and tones, and a sweeping or panned sense of waves and change elevating the latter half.
The healing power of these ambient layers is immense here, an hypnotic and boldly soothing, post-six-minute listen, which is followed beautifully by the sheer depth and enveloping frequencies of Heavenly Plain.
Celestial Lullaby changes the mood quite distinctly. Vocal outbursts appear like notes on the keyboard, rhythmically guiding us into an echo-chamber of tuneful wonder. Then for Inception, melody steps aside, while atmospheric magnitude creates an other-worldly wave of escapism. And with Water Dreaming, a moment of rhythmic bounce and character, the meeting between organic and extra-terrestrial tones provides a mighty dose of something both confrontational and calming.
Reformation follows, the first track crafted for Eternal Return. It’s intention was to represent the idea of being put back together again, perhaps implying a sense of having being broken down over time, or returning to the start, to be rebuilt once more. As such, the blissful sweeping sound of evolution feels like a dream-induced white-noise – a style more commonly found throughout Darren’s previous albums.
The sudden rhythm and more mainstream structure of You Realise later brings a moment of subtle optimism and uplift, before Eternal Return, the title-track, recaptures the creative vastness and subtle dissonance of the project’s inspiring subject matter.
To finish, with Visions of You (It’s Alright), those vocal fragments return with both playful and haunting contrast, ultimately adding a hopeful brightness to this suggested story and the album’s closing moments.
Eleven original compositions make up the stunning venture that is Eternal Return. In my view, this is Darren Harris’ most established and accessible project yet, creating a fully welcoming and interesting audio blanket, while maintaining those essential and ever-impressive production nuances, which ring loudly throughout his extensive and incomparably unique repertoire.
Download Darren Harris’ music via Bandcamp. Follow him on Instagram, YouTube or visit his Website.
