The Breaking - Breaking (2020) [Hi-Res]

New York-based musician and filmmaker Austin Johnson thrives in textural realms. Since his mesmeric 2017 short film “babyteeth” and its accompanying soundtrack, completed during his final year at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, his work under the production name Breaking has wandered through thick and wistful terrain. His inner world is one where sounds and visuals both possess the same poetic potential; flexible, fluid environments where the natural and the synthetic coalesce, sculpted into patterns of perpetual flow or phantasmagorical immersions depending on the contexts surrounding them.

After evolving through a quiet storm of genre-fluid singles and shortform releases, Breaking has broken through bedroom-pop boundaries with a soul-stirring self-titled debut LP on Orchid Tapes three years in the making; an autodidactic coming-of-age story that constantly crossfades to form a sonic montage of memory. At once Johnson’s most collaborative and inward-leaning work to date, Breaking is a pensive journey through self-reflection and toward self-assurance; a sound setting for wounds to heal in. Drifting through regions of radio static, distorted guitar, glitchy programming, colossal drones and heartfelt pop songs, Johnson builds cinematic soundscapes of detail and depth that seek out solace and eventually find fulfillment in the face of fear.

- Nick Zanca

Tracklist:
1.01 - The Breaking - Invocation (0:58)
1.02 - The Breaking - Used to You Gone (3:53)
1.03 - The Breaking - Cars (3:13)
1.04 - The Breaking - After Cars (2:32)
1.05 - The Breaking - Interstates (3:56)
1.06 - The Breaking - Neighborhoods (1:51)
1.07 - The Breaking - Body Double (2:37)
1.08 - The Breaking - Tremmmur (3:20)
1.09 - The Breaking - Elastic (3:37)
1.10 - The Breaking - Breaking (3:51)
1.11 - The Breaking - Heart Raker (3:19)
1.12 - The Breaking - Smokestack (2:55)