This latest opus from INA GRM director François Bonnet’s Kassel Jaeger alias is a characteristically enigmatic and conceptual affair, as its Latin title means “under the thing, under the substance, under the matter.” However, it apparently also doubles as a reference to a chapter in Victor Hugo’s 1866 novel Toilers of the Sea which recounts a man’s struggle for survival in the aftermath of a shipwreck. While the deeper significance of the latter association admittedly eludes me, it was clearly an inspiration for Bonnet, as the album’s arc gradually evolves from more cavernous, subterranean sounds towards the ambiance of a deserted island. Unsurprisingly, the journey between those two points is a beguiling and hallucinatory rabbit hole of shadowy mystery, as Bonnet’s talent for conjuring vivid, immersive, and otherworldly soundscapes has few peers in the realm of production and sound design and his visions are always unique and imaginative.
I have been a fairly devoted fan of Kassel Jaeger’s eerie and abstract dreamscapes for a while now, but it took me a bit longer than usual to warm to this one, as its early moments have the feel of a noise-gnawed dark ambient album recorded in the Paris Catacombs. Thankfully, Bonnet soon transcends those gloomy beginnings, but they are certainly a thematically appropriate place to start, as he describes his vision for this album as “the concrete beneath the concrete…the immanence of sounds…their becoming…a driving force, like a tide.”
In more practical terms, “Sub Re (part I)“ begins as a series of roiling seismic convulsions that intensify into a churning maelstrom before unexpectedly resolving into a mesmerizing stretch of deep, sensuous drones and spatially mobile metal chimes. It becomes an even more haunting and darkly beautiful passage once the accompanying undercurrent of hissing and twinkling ambiance fades in, as the trippily panning chimes feel like they are emanating from inside my skull (Sub Re is very much a headphone album, by the way). The piece’s spell only gets deeper and weirder from there, however, as the chimes dissolve into the “bad trip” paranoia of distant helicopter sounds followed by a dark fantasia of smeary feedback and murky, viscous-sounding bass oscillations before unveiling an almost operatic final act that evokes a detuned orchestra damned to a state of eternally looping suspended animation in Dracula’s castle.
The album’s second half again opens with a brief visit to a dark ambient cavern, but the reverberating percussion sounds are gradually enveloped in an undulating, flickering, and unstable-sounding swell of electronic chirps and organ drones. Characteristically, that motif unexpectedly dissolves like a mirage to leave behind a desolate scene of moaning sonic phantoms and sinister-sounding slides that conjures a lonely brass elegy in a massive burning cathedral while a cold rain crackles and hisses on the blackened ruins.
In an impressive bit of compositional sleight of hand, however, a glassy and smeared haze soon emerges that beautifully evokes a radiant, slow-motion sunrise. Naturally, however, that too dissolves and an empty windblown beach with buzzing insects and squawking seagulls gradually comes into focus. It is initially a bit disorienting and unsettling and suggestive of a shipwreck, yet the scene steadily warms until it feels like I had just died and washed up on heaven’s shore. I suppose that would have made a very satisfying and happy ending for the album, but definitely not a fitting one because absolutely everything is ephemeral and illusory on Kassel Jaeger Island. Consequently, the brooding sounds of the haunted orchestra soon waft in to lure me back to the vampire’s opera house in a somnambulant trance to relive Bonnet’s cursed time loop once again.
It all adds up to quite a deep and memorably disorienting album-length mindfuck, as Sub Re has the feel of dream that is continually dissolving to reveal an even deeper dream. Is there a bottom? Beats me. Am I a restless ghost drifting through the walls of a labyrinthine underground city? Who knows. Did I just cross the river Styx into Hades? I have no fucking idea, but Sub Re is one hell of a surreal and absorbing headphone trip regardless.
