Ondness - Not Really Now Not Any More (2019)

Our first tape release is from a dear friend and a fearless long-time sound activist. Ondness is one of many aliases of Bruno Silva. You may know him from Sabre (with Carlos Nascimento) or solo as Serpente; under the Ondness alias he’s been putting out music on Where To Now?, Seagrave or Sucata Tapes (a sister label from Discrepant). “Not Really Now Not Any More” is a beautiful resilient piece, mastering the fine line between album and mixtape.

Both the title and the contents of “Not Really Now Not Any More” have been inspired by the idea that we are constantly floating around unfinished ideas. The title is taken from a graffiti that inspired Alan Garner to write “Red Shift” (Mark Fisher wrote about it in his book/essay “The Weird And the Eerie”). The typo and the idea around “not really now not any more” serves this album perfectly well.

During its ten tracks, Ondness is constantly going back and forth on the way he explores soundscapes and how they can pair up with their own resolution. Nothing in “Not Really Now Not Any More” is really finished but also it isn’t unfinished. It’s a subtle idealization of the importance of accepting how things are. “Torre” starts and ends the album as two different songs sharing the similarities – not only the title – that encapsulate the whole essence of “Not Really Now Not Any More”.

“Esquina, Espera” points out this whole idea of never-ending construction, it’s dub-ska-industrial-techno perfectly crafted to make the listener feel the freakish anxiety that we have to be everywhere right now. It’s pop-up music, constantly moving and fading away, reappearing with a new idea and then leaving it out in the open. It tells the listener about how it lacks ideas because it contains too many ideas.

Those ‘too many ideas’ make this a perfectly fit record for 2019. Music that is everywhere and nowhere. But it's not loud or trying to show off. It lets the listener peel its skin and find the magnificent sci-fi extravaganza that “Not Really Now Not Any More” inspires. Going nowhere being somewhere. Do you feel me?