Gnaarf - Beyond Repair (2020)

The piano scaffolding of Fixed, embracing a landscape out of phase, shifting, blurring, with no secure or predictable footing. The empty, damp streets of Sleepless echo to Lund’s muted horn – more Rick Deckard than Sam Spade. Hangover Blues staggers relentlessly on, chasing the ethereal saxophone light. From Tension to a dream of entropy. The Letter conjures the neighbourhood odd guy’s garage laboratory… A broken mechanism walks in uncertain circles in Klirrquietsch’s detail-rich darkness. Jones’ djinn-like soprano saxophone is the Ghost in the Machine. All things end and the stately and static-drenched Broken leaves us with a handful of sonic dust, structure crumbling on the wind.

Steeped in a subdued surrealism, the sounds on Beyond Repair are often isolated, separate, combining at a distance… With various lockdown projects in 2020 trying to show that musicians can still come together (play in the spirit of ‘face-to-face’) despite physical distance, gnaarf has (knowingly?) emphasised the current separation. For all I know, this was recorded with everyone present, in close proximity, but the sense of distant sounds interacting from afar pervades this album.