This latest statement from this shapeshifting Oslo producer is quite a radically deconstructed foray into “decelerated, spectral dub.” The album borrows its title from Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s elusive, haunting, and uncategorizable 2021 film of the same name, yet Villain was also greatly inspired by Pauline Oliveros’s writings on “internally recalled sounds inaudible to others.” As befits an album inspired by said iconic deep listening visionary, Memoria is a deeply immersive and mesmerizing bombshell that absolutely requires headphones (or at least a building-shaking soundsystem) to reveal the full scope of its beautifully nuanced, vividly realized, spatially rich, and legitimately otherworldly vision. It is also fitting that Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “sound as memory” rumination features a bit of a science fiction twist, as pieces like “Entre Nosotros” may very well be the most boldly futuristic iteration of dub that anyone will release this year.
After a brief yet gorgeous intro (“Labour of Imagination”) of deep exhalation-like chords and sensuous flutes that feel like a descent into a hallucinatory Peruvian rainforest, Villain gets right to the serious business of blowing minds with the aforementioned “Entre Nosotros.” While it is ostensibly just slow-motion dub techno with a bit of industrial hum, the magic lies in the sound design, as the groove feels unsettlingly viscous and a bit like the churning and throbbing of a vast subterranean machine. More glibly put, I would describe it as the seismic and gelatinous cosmic horror dance party of the year, but a ghostly, murky, and overlapping piano concerto gradually drifts into the piece as well and floats throughout space like Keith Jarrett transmitting phantom improvisations from the afterlife (which would be quite a neat trick, given that he is still alive). The following title piece is something of a sound design gem as well, as a faint sheen of ambient music drifts over a churning and shapeshifting landscape of industrial throbs, buzzes, and hums. Hell, I think there might also be the ghost of a buried rave anthem in there as well.
Villain’s impressive hot streak only gets hotter with the next two pieces. In “Hope Synapses,” a murmuring, flickering, and gently whining ambient reverie gradually expands until it feels like all of the insects and animals in a hallucinatory rainforest have begun to eerily harmonize and sync like a single organic entity. In the following “Blue,” a gently growling and squelching kickdrum lurch propels a skeletal groove that feels like a funky techno banger smeared and deconstructed into unrecognizable abstraction. That is merely the beginning, however, as it gradually builds into a heaving, bubbling, and downright seismic juggernaut enhanced with panning mindfuckery and a chaotic web of overlapping flute melodies.
Unsurprisingly, the remaining two pieces are fine as well, but “Entre Nosotros,” “Hope Synapses,” and “Blue” are the holy trinity of highlights that make Memoria one of the year’s most fascinating albums for me. I cannot stress enough how much this album transformed once I threw on a pair of headphones, as what once felt like a stretched, disjointed, and hyperminimal dub techno album suddenly sounded instead like Villain stumbled upon a crashed alien spaceship while making field recordings in a deep jungle and harnessed their advanced technology to make a deep and hypernatural leftfield dub masterpiece. At its best, Memoria seems to suspend time and effortlessly transcend every existing trope, template, and bit of accumulated dynamic wisdom that keeps her peers earthbound. While some longtime fans may miss the melodicism of her earlier work, Villain’s dazzlingly heightened sound design powers more than fill that void for me.
