Taku Unami

This fascinating and unusual collaboration first began to take root back in 2024, as Erstwhile tapped Unami to master Drumm’s Sheer Hellish Miasma II album. Apparently, that went so well that label head Jon Abbey then suggested that the two artists collaborate. The twist, however, is that Drumm and Unami “did not talk directly at any point” during the recording of these three elegantly constructed hour-long mindbombs.

Notably, this is my first exposure to the prolific Unami, who is “is a performer of multi-instrumental, improvised, and unclassifiable (non-)music” inspired by “cosmic-pessimism, science-fiction, supernatural-horror, and weird-fiction.” Unami also happens to be a huge Kevin Drumm fan, which is presumably why Zero Talk feels like an absolute  marriage made in heaven, as each of these pieces feels like its own top-tier ambient Drumm album filled with feedback phantoms, hallucinatory oscillations, industrial machinery, and enigmatic field recordings.

It admittedly took me several weeks to fully absorb this massive opus and my first impression was that Zero Talk would have been just as good (if not) better if it was reduced to just the opening “u2d.” However, I have since come around and now view the entire album as something akin to an eerie and enigmatic trilogy of abstract science fiction films in which each part is an essential part of a sophisticated, ingenious, and unsettling whole.

In keeping with that theme, “u2d” sets the scene with an immersive swirl of bleary and smeary sonic ghosts and languorously shifting oscillations. The foundational warm hum makes it feel like an immersive, meditative, and subtly hallucinatory soundbath at first, but as it deepens, it begins to feel more like flickering and haunting shapes ephemerally appearing in a sinister supernatural fog. The uneasy sense of menace then deepens even further, as that soft-focus haze is unexpectedly juxtaposed with the vivid and visceral sounds of someone chopping wood outside a remote cabin in a frozen wilderness.

Unsurprisingly, that mysterious and solitary woodchopper would soon become a central figure in the narrative arc that I found myself projecting onto Zero Talk, but there are some other exquisite pleasures that require a bit less imagination to appreciate, as I loved how many of the duo’s spectral and elusive sounds often seemed more felt than heard (like barely perceptible extra-dimensional disturbances). I also loved how some of the moaning and phantasmal sounds seem like they could be time-stretched and heavily reverbed recordings of speeding race cars or motorcycles.  

It is the album’s second piece “0” that has sneakily become my favorite, however. That said, I was definitely mystified by it at first, as it seems to aimlessly drift back and forth between several scenes that seem like field recordings from a car wash, a construction site, and an empty office storeroom where someone is systematically hunting through boxes and folders. Once I properly settled into its wavelength, however, I became fascinated with the hypnotic physicality of the sounds, as it felt like rumbling heavy machines were cyclically rolling over me and trucks were continually moving closer and further and panning around the stereo space.

Once I was sufficiently immersed/mesmerized, I began wondering about the significance of the varying scenes and why they kept repeating, which gradually began to feel like mysterious clues to a deep mystery. What is that person searching for? Is someone after them? Am I supposed to be connecting the dots to reveal some kind of sinister deep state conspiracy? I have no fucking idea, as I quickly became distracted by a buzzing chorus of psychedelic cicadas that made everything feel like it was behind a rippling veil of heat haze.

And then, for the grand finale, the piece unexpectedly resolves into a heavy buzzing drone that made me feel like I had just become engulfed in an undulating, unstable, and deeply psychoactive cosmic vibration and that everything else had now ceased to matter. It weirdly reminds me of slow cinema auteur James Benning’s L. Cohen, which is essentially a long single take of a seemingly unremarkable field that ultimately proves to be the suspense- and mystery-building prelude to otherworldly real-time footage of an eclipse. 

The spacey and futuristic-sounding final piece “d2u” has similarly minimal and enigmatic beginnings, as it is essentially just a gently oscillating haze of whines with a deeper, cyclical pulse. That cycling pulse proved to be impressively hypnotic, however, gradually lulling me into a trance while the chittering and whining higher frequencies stealthily burrowed deeper and deeper into my mind. Gradually, however, the rhythm starts to falter and fade and I soon felt like I had just awakened in a bright operating room in a UFO or CIA black site or some shit and someone (or something) was actively rewiring my brain. 

When they finish, however, it feels like I have attained a higher realm of sensory consciousness akin to synesthesia, as the air becomes a vibrating symphony of frequencies, oscillations, and alien harmonies. It conjures an otherworldly country meadow at night with a supernatural glow and a host of frog and insect sounds that feel digitized and distorted in unfamiliar ways. In the final reveal, an eerie murmuring sound slowly intensifies in the depths that feels legitimately phantasmal and haunting. It feels both infinitely compelling and texturally rich, yet also vaguely sinister and unsettling, like I was gradually becoming aware that my hallucinatory sensory idyll was merely an illusion projected by hulking subterranean machines insistently cycling beneath me.

Unsurprisingly, there are not a lot of albums that leave me feeling like I am living in a simulation and that I might actually be the paranoid protagonist of a Philip K Dick novel, so Zero Talk is definitely an all-timer for me. It certainly is a challenging release that requires deep and focused listening to reveal its secrets, but it is absolutely worth the effort, as Unami’s contributions take Drumm’s vision to a transcendent new level that feels far greater than the sum of its parts. In fact, if I were more amenable to New Age-y beliefs in mysticism, alternate dimensions, aliens, and universal consciousness, I would likely believe that Zero Talk is the sort of album that could awaken my proverbial third eye, as Drumm and Unami masterfully manipulate frequencies to such a degree that it genuinely feels like sorcery.  

Given that, the album’s title feels almost ironic, as the two artists seem to have actually attained the Platonic ideal of a conversation: an egoless dialogue of ideas in which both sides are united in a quest to create a radically unique, elegantly mysterious, and ineffably haunting and beautiful work of otherworldly art. To my ears, Zero Talk feels less like sound art and more like psychic surgery to awaken my mind to deeper pleasures of subtle vibrations, oscillations, and frequency manipulations. Notably, these discs were intended to be played in any order, which unlocks a host of compelling variations for those willing to plunge into a three-hour reverie of slow-motion psychotropic sound art, but every single one of these discs on its own can feel like having your mind slowly blown if you choose to listen deeply enough.

Listen here.