Seth Thorn - a curious doubling of terms (Audiobulb) [Ambient]

The Slow Music Movement
Oct 4
2 min read

*** This blog post first appeared in TSMM's October 1st Newsletter, where you can get all the tips (and more) first ***

The cover for Seth Thorn's a curious doubling of terms album, showing abstract cover art: a white shape overlaps a textured black square on a beige background. Text: "SETH THORN" and "a curious doubling of terms".

“Seth Thorn is a violinist and assistant professor of interactive media at Arizona State University, who composes by writing sample-level code for sandbox modular hardware systems. He currently leads the NSF-funded Glitch’n initiative and develops haptic violin hardware through his startup, Matter Squared.” I’m not quite sure what most of that means, but it sounds as intriguing as it does geeky, and thankfully all that theory and science has led to some great music. I’m only surprised that for someone who’s obviously given music so much thought that it took him this long to release his debut album.

Seth Thorn the music producer and violinist, with shoulder-length hair and beard gazes calmly at camera. Wears a black shirt against a textured gray brick wall.

The album starts in fine ambient fashion, easy drones rising and falling like a summer tide as waves of static fold into the swell, making for a serene album opener. Next up Thorn unpacks his violin and glides like a lone figure skater over the glitchy, shapeshifting soundscape that’s cratered by submerged beats, encouraging all classical music to embrace the electronic now. So far so mellow, but signs of unease creep in on “the unspoken”. The violin is retired, the static intensifies, sounds are reversed and chopped before their natural course is run, a begrudging acknowledgement that life isn’t all plain sailing. The feeling of unease remains on “what lies before”, although to a lesser due to its drone undercurrents which provide an underlying calm to the surface’s more agitated electronic detailing, paving the way nicely for the denser, intenser, darker ambience of “old degrowth forest”, a mid-album wake up call.

The second half of the album maps a similarly well crafted, thoughtfully sequenced route. Violin parts are layered at varying depths on the more orchestrally minded, “taking to heart” and come to fore on the almost sentimental ambient neoclassicism of “friends show the way”, before the album ends with the string encouraged beats, low end rumble and shadow lurking “morbid symptomatic logic”, which wouldn’t sound out of place in a low lit Dresden club space.

His debut album might have taken a while to appear but it’s a serious statement, although sadly I have a sneaking suspicion it will pass many by. It’s tough out there. Let’s just hope the follow up doesn’t take quite as long to materialise.