There have been a lot of albums dedicated to or about New York City in recent years, but none quite like
this one. Following his ambient Pure Tone Audiometry and Or You Could Just...,
Aarktica's Jon DeRosa wanders into yet another territory. Although it may not be one that fans of the previous
records are used to, it shows his diversity nonetheless. Displaying interest in free jazz and avant-garde,
Bleeding Light combines electronics with horns, guitar and sometimes downcast, yet soft vocals. An
exception arrives with "A Wash a Sea Goodbye It's Me," which is more or less accessible and warm. Otherwise,
gloomy tones are produced by guitar, percussion, trumpet or saxophone, with processed sounds lingering in the
gaps. Bleeding Light finishes with the words "everyone of us is lost in our own way," capping what represents a
less desirable side of New York, but one that may not be sufficiently acknowledged. - Kenyon Hopkin, 21 April 2005
Jon DeRosa has been creating albums under the name Aarktica for over half a decade now. Bleeding Light
is his fourth full-length release under that guise (he's also released alt-country albums under the name Pale
Horse And Rider), and like his previous efforts shows a slight change of styles that will surely interest new
fans and possibly cause some people who have heard his music before to scratch their heads a bit.
I was talking to a friend about the music of Aarktica and threw out the term "drone pop" after which we
both had a bit of a chuckle (simply because the terms seem like the exact opposite of one another), but in all
honesty it's one of the best explanations of the kind of musical worlds that DeRosa creates. While his excellent
Darla Bliss-Out release ...Or You Could Just Go Through Your Whole Life And Be Happy Anyway
seemed to experiment more with rhythms and slighty more typical song structures, his last release Pure Tone Audiometry
stripped back many of those layers once again.
"Depression Modern" opens the release and gives the listener a good idea of what they're in for with an almost
dirging build of horns, single note bass strikes, backwards guitar loops, brushed percussion and layers of
filtered vocals. The track builds a sense of dread by slowly adding uneasy layers and then winding down before
providing any sort of resolution. "OJ Gude" follows, and while it feels a bit more light with a brighter guitar
melody, it's also content to linger in the shadows with static-filled rhythmic programming and dense layers of
drones and vocals.
From there, the album really slows down as "A Shadow Knife (Draws The Bleeding Light)" stretches out to over
eight minutes with sparse guitar drones and horns before piling on some electronic programming and building
harshness towards the end while "Twilght Insects" is another track of densely-layered filtered vocal and guitar
drones that is content to seriously drift. The album-titled "Bleeding Light" is the longest track on the entire
release and also one of the most successful, drawing on North Indian instrumental elements and a
slowly-progressing (but quite heavy) rhythmic backing to build the track from quiet to dense and loud over
the course of nine excellent minutes.
Aarktica revient avec Bleeding Light. Pour cet album, marquant une évolution nouvelle dans son parcours,
l’américain Jon DeRosa aka Aarktica (également responsable du projet country Pale Horse & Rider) s’est entouré du
fidèle Aaron Spectre (programmations rythmiques, discrètes, de rares modulations), d’un bassiste et surtout de
trois cuivres (saxophones alto et ténor, trompette). Ces instruments peuvent apporter une coloration free jazz à
certains morceaux comme Night Fell, Broke Itself, se juxtaposant assez bien à la guitare minimale et répétitive de
DeRosa et à ses atmosphères drones et évanescentes.
A côté de telles structures en expansion, certains titres marquent un retour à la pop, au slow core et au
shoegazing (sublime A Wash A Sea Goodbye). L’introductif Depression Modern mélange ces deux directions.
Ainsi Bleeding Light, album clair et aérien, est plus savoureux que les précédents opus de l’odyssée Aarktica.
Sa musique de l’apesanteur et du voyage y revêt de belles nouvelles couleurs.
We admired previous Aarktica releases on the wonderfully esoteric Silber label...so we were not
surprised to learn that the band has now signed with...the also wonderfully esoteric Darla label. Aarktica is
Jon DeRosa...a fellow who seems intent on expanding the boundaries of his music over time. Bleeding Light
is the fourth Aarktica release. Like previous releases, the album is a winding trip into musical territory that
seems simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar. DeRosa combines ambient sounds with subtle pop elements to create a
sound that is all his own. His music is not obvious...but is, instead, a peculiar blend of odd sounds and
slightly surreal instrumental passages. Just when you think things are starting to sound somewhat normal...the
music suddenly takes a turn and heads into deeper waters. Bleeding Light is a mature album and proves that
DeRosa's career has only just begun. Features pleasing tracks like "Depression Modern" and "A Wash A Sea Goodbye
It's Me."
Ambient Sounds and backwards vocals drift in the background like the start of a surreal dream. Then the beat picks up
and moves fast under drifting guitar, while static hiss and spacious notes reverberate. Soft vocals, almost spoken,
slip through the sounds and cold desert and white plains are lost in the tundra. Haunting guitars echo between
walls and fall soft between scraps of sound, found and played in the spaces that are left empty and waiting. Pulled
apart by strung out saxophone and pushed together by the random solidity of the drum machine. - Marcel Feldman, Spring 2005
The way the music swirls and repeats, plus recurring allusions to the sea and to New York City, drive
home the feeling of being lost. The album's final sentiment is that we all feel like this - "every one of us is lost in
our own way." But that's not presented as a hopeful thought, really; it's as loaded with confusion and sadness as the
rest of the album, from the first track "Depression Modern" onward. Often the loneliest music is also the most
invigorating, though, and that's certainly true here. Aarktica's Bleeding Light is an intimate epic which takes
raw feelings and lets the music flow naturally from them. It's a genuinely exciting album, one that matches emotion
with experimentation in powerful ways. - Dave Heaton, 7 February 2005
From Jackson Free Press:
Jon DeRosa and his project Aarktica has been a staple of the Darla Records camp since
2000. The somnambulistic gauze that shrouds every guitar chord of his catalogue recalls
shoegaze, ambient and folk. His newest collection, "Bleeding Light," steps forward with a
new and more organic dimension: horns. Quoting DeRosa on his reasoning behind making this
album; "Bleeding Light" is an album about New York City. It is a product of urban
isolation, and the songs are aural manifestations of the loss of self." However
morose his reasons may appear to be, the result is is one of his most ambitious
releases to date. - Alex Slawson and Herman Snell
From Junkmedia:
Bleeding Light is a varied release, with songs ranging from free jazz to Indian raga to pop. But
it's unified by a reflective tone of urban isolation that Jon DeRosa's New York City-based musical collective
Aarktica molds into sublime, meditative soundscapes.
The opener, "Depression Modern," seems to shift and form itself behind a determined bass note echo,
before scaling a confused climax guided by DeRosa's monotone vocal. The lush "OJ Gude" follows and is more
fully formed, one of only two "pop" songs that provide crests in the waves of sound that surround them.
The most interesting cut, "A shadow knife (draws the bleeding light)," is ultimately a free jazz composition
structured around Seth Misterka's alto sax, but it begins with a raga drone that eventually leads to a danceable
drum beat. By the time the title track closes the album, the raga is in full effect, and so is the Eastern
mysticism. Over his tambura, DeRosa drones repeatedly "everyone of us is lost in our own way,"
weaving a transcendent, desolate finale. - Joe Sullivan, 10 March 2005
From Mundane Sounds:
When you look at the name "Aarktica," you might think it pertains to something "artic," or possibly
"Antartica." Listening to the Aarktica's fourth album Bleeding Light, it's quite obvious that such
allusions are apt. To top it off, the album is wrapped up in chilling, stark white packaging, making it
the sonic equivalent of spending six months in the tundra. It's cold, it's bleak, it's warm, and only
occasionally is it warmed up by a ray or two of light. Wear a light jacket while listening and you'll freeze
to death.
Such description might seem silly, but in the case of Aarktica, it's certainly apropos. Jon DeRosa's a man
who likes his music to be atmospheric, whether it's cold gothic post-pop (Dead Leaves Rising) or country & western
(Pale Horse & Rider), his music is always, always heavily drenched in atmosphere. For Bleeding Light,
DeRosa--accompanied by members of the Antony Braxton Ensemble--examines a world that's arctic, cold and detatched
and ambient. The pace is glacial; the music is extremely detatched and listening is narcotic, and that's most
likely what DeRosa set out to accomplish. Unlike those other projects, Aarktica is more of a focus on the mental
state; it's beautiful music for thinking, and lyrical content is not the focus.
While Bleeding Light has overtones of Eno--from the quiet, subtle ambient drone to DeRosa's somewhat
awkward, drowsy vocals that pop in and out between long periods of gentle instrumental bliss--there's much more
than mere rehashing of Music For Airports or Another Green World. Underneath the cathederals of
relaxing sound, you'll soon discover that the music is built on late 1990s electronica ("Twilight Insecta"),
Eastern rhythms ("We're Like Two Drops Seperated By A Drowning") and free jazz, ("Night Fell Broke Itself") but it
never really sounds indebted to any one style. When he sings on "A Wash A Sea Goodbye It's Me" and "Depression
Modern," he adds a dimension of melancholy to his work. Knowing that he's a good singer with a beautiful voice
on his other projects should be kept in mind, because his singing here is as cold and detatched as the
instrumental passages.
Bleeding Light is austere and cold and sounds like it should be played in art galleries and museum
foyers. It's also intelligent, gorgeous and worth repeated listens. It is a beautiful soundtrack to a cold
weekend, a good night's sleep or a simple forty-five minutes of meditation. - Joseph Kyle, March 7, 2005
From Opus:
A few days ago, I was working on my computer around two in the morning. Suddenly, I realized that I could hear a
faint yet noticeable hum in the background. I never figured out where it came from, whether it was the power
lines outside our house, some electronic equipment in my roommate's bedroom that hadn't been turned off, my
computer, or something else. At first, it seemed fairly innocuous and I just ignored it. However, it continued to
undulate and pulse in the background, and rather than become annoying, it slowly became ominous and
harrowing.
Next thing I knew, I was half-convinced that some alien craft was hovering just above the trees on our
boulevard, lurking and watching me. Admittedly, I was fairly sleep-deprived by then, but when the sound eventually
faded away, I felt a noticeable sense of relief.
Such is the power of drones.
This is something that Jon DeRosa has realized, and has been harnessing and manipulating for years now.
Bleeding Light, his fourth full-length under the Aarktica moniker, continues his exploration. Ostensibly,
the album is about the feelings of alienation and loneliness conjured up by large urban spaces (specifically
New York). And as my aforementioned experience reminded me, drones are perfectly suited for this sort of thing.
They can easily conjure up intense feelings of anxiety and nervousness, their subtly wavering sonics easily
playing with your subconscious mind, awakening thoughts and impressions that you're unsure as to whether they're
real or not.
Now, I suppose a slight disclaimer is in place. Those expecting a full-on return to the massive, glacial
soundscapes of Aarktica's first album, No Solace In Sleep, might be somewhat disappointed. And I'll admit that
I sometimes fall into that category. Since his debut, DeRosa has worked hard to integrate his guitar drones
and atmospherics into a more song-oriented structure, with varying degrees of success. When it succeeds, the
results are superb, and when it doesn't, it really doesn't.
Bleeding Light is strongest when DeRosa sits back and lets his sounds do what they do best -
drawing the listener in, surrounding them, and affecting them. "Depression Modern" opens the album with the
sounds of bells tolling in slow motion, immediately casting the disc in a funereal glow, as low-level static,
gasping horns, and DeRosa's dry vocals drift between the tones.
"Night Fell, Broke Itself" and "A Shadow Knife (Draws The Bleeding Light)" are two of the more successful
instrumental tracks on the album, the latter bordering a little too closely on Hood's territory
(think The Cycle Of Days And Seasons rather than Cold House) but easily standing up to the best
that Leeds' finest has had to offer.
However, Aarktica's Achilles' Heel continues to be DeRosa's voice. Its dry, laconic timbre is much better
suited for Pale Horse And Rider, DeRosa's darkly tongue-in-cheek country-western project. But it often juts out
a bit too much from Aarktica's music on tracks such as "OJ Gude" and "A Wash A Sea Goodbye It's Me" (which
eschews the drone aesthetic altogether). When his voice is slightly affected, such as with the ghostly moans
and whispers that drift through "Twilight Insecta"' ocean-like depths, the result is much more effective,
emphasizing the music's harrowing aspects.
Although the album is built around the structures of Indian raga music, those distinctive sounds only
really become noticeable on the album's closer, the "epic" title track. Over the lulling, hypnotic strains
of the tambura, tempered only slightly by sparse piano notes and distant percussion, DeRosa intones
"Everyone of us is lost in our own way". And the fact that his voice sounds as if it's constantly on the
verge of being swallowed up by the tambura's drones while singing those lyrics serves only to underscore the
album's themes of isolation and lostness. - Jason Morehead, 1 March, 2005
From Pitchfork Media:
Rating 7.2
Aarktica didn't seem to know what he was on 2002's ...Or You Could Just Go Through Your Whole Life and Be Happy Anyway.
Jon DeRosa meshed somnolent ambient soundscapes and shoegazer melodies, drawling dolorous, just-shoot-yourself-already
vocals that belied the richly melancholic instrumentals. As part of Darla's Bliss Out series, the album showed an
uncharacteristic devotion to acoustic instrumentation, often layering brass, orchestral percussion and warbling
tremolo-sodden guitars atop wooly electronic textures. In the end, pop won out; well-structured songs like "Aura Lee"
and "Nostalgia = Distortion" trumped the album's more nebulous sections with wan, intimate melodies.
The common thread running through De Rosa's compositions, both catchy and inchoate, was sadness, and that thread
continues on Bleeding Light, Aarktica's fourth and least confused album. Staking ground between Johann Johannson's
cool meditative drones and Stars Like Fleas' flailing electro free jazz, the album is tonally consistent, shuffling
between heavy-hearted melodic ephemera and perambulating instrumental passages.
The best example of the latter is "A Shadow Knife (Draws Bleeding Light)", which is underpinned by slow-pulsing guitar
drones as it ventures on an eight-minute expedition led by horns and drums. Followed by the ringing doppler swells of
"We're Like Two Drops Separated By a Drowning", the pairing cuts a tidy architectural swath across the album,
bisecting its eight tracks and setting up a taut finale. "A Wash a Sea Goodbye It's Me" reinstates the acoustic
elements; summoning Do Make Say Think with lulling guitars, soft horns and hard-driven drums, the song is as close
as DeRosa gets to an all-out rocker.
Hardly disrupting the album's swooping flow, "A Wash a Sea Goodbye" gives way to a pair of drone-saturated epics.
The climactic title track licks a twangy middle eastern drone, spreading a murmured, meditative vocal over the
slow-moving mass. The song's finale is a rare bit of populist hopefulness ("Everyone of us is lost in our own way"),
offering tenuous yet satisfying circularity: In contrast with the oppressively grim chords of opener "Depression Modern",
its cautious optimism rings of victory. It seems De Rosa has finally reconciled himself with unhappiness-- and it's that
flowering that makes Bleeding Light, at times gruesome and hard to stomach, a compelling listen. - Sam Ubl, 7 February 2005
From Popmatters:
This is how free jazz dreams: patiently, because the universe is patient. This is what free jazz dreams about:
it's less complicated than you would expect, moving slower than standard time-lapse dream life, ruminating on
ideas both abstract and expansive.
Meditation comes before prescience in the subconscious state of formless music. Its fantasies are abrupt
chasms of nothing, the kind of untouchable hollows that haunt insomniacs.
Aarktica's Bleeding Light is a manifestation of this concept: its contents exist in a foggy state
of perpetual repetition and redundancy. Sonically, Bleeding Light is deeply indebted to the in-between passages
found in Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden or Laughing Stock, those moments of unsettling placidity where
jazz, pop, and sound manipulation are all suggested. Like a waking dream or a sleeping reality,
Aarktica (multi-instrumentalist Jon DeRosa with a handful of guest musicians) performs where edges aren't
defined, depths aren't charted, and space, in that moment, is infinite.
A rotating infinity is what Bleeding Light serves to provide on its best tracks. These extended drones
offer the possibility of revelation beyond their deceivingly reiterative surfaces. "A Shadow Knife
(Draws the Bleeding Light)", the eight minute instrumental centerpiece of the album, is a strong example of
this comforting movement, cyclical and concentrated. The song is a steadying swirl, trumpet and saxophone
hovering around a programmed beat and trancelike guitar; its centripetal pull is reinforced with an added
breakbeat. More unsteady and ominous is the opening incantation "Depression Modern": unsteady because it feels
like it could split open and bleed at any moment, provoked by the slither of tongue-stoked reeds; ominous
because its loops -- a pounding chord, a backwards wavelength -- support doubtful vocals. "I have seen this
night before / I remember it in theory," DeRosa sings, anemically, under the ebb and flow of the pulsing
instrumentation. "I have seen this night before / Or else I made it up completely." Most impressive is the
closing title track, a loop of drums and guttural sitar that churn like a drugged, uncomplicated
"Tomorrow Never Knows". This creation is a core-bound twister, structurally tight and exceedingly simple, a
shoegazing zone-out that develops its distilled swoon from utter focus. DeRosa negotiates its muddy spin cycle
with a resilient mantra: "Come on baby, gonna make it through the night / Gotta waste nearly half our lives
before we find the beacon of the bleeding light".
At Bleeding Light's very core is a distrustful consciousness, represented by sounds that are at once
suspicious and familiar. The saxophones that wake, groggy and irritable, in the midst of "Night Fell, Broke
Itself"; the dissonant feedback squalls that contort like papier-mâché wings, a calming and a nuisance, in
"We're Like Two Drops Separated by a Drowning"; the wordless vocals, tarred in buckets of reverb, floating
aimlessly in "Twilight Insecta": all are sounds seeking a purpose, and it's not immediately clear whether
that search is meaningful or meaningless. The possibility of deriving some kind of conclusion or
enlightenment from Aarktica's spinstering is just that: a possibility, undefined and unfocused,
susceptible to misinterpretation or over-interpretation.
Different listeners will hear different things in Bleeding Light (Aarktica's fourth release and first
since 2003's Pure Tone Audiometry); it's nearly impossible to sit through its quasi-turbulent drones
without eventually transferring the contents of your own head onto the mix. In infinity, and in eternity,
we hear what we want to hear and judge accordingly. Bleeding Light
is, therefore, a subjective experience, made whole or disassembled by an individual's interpretation
of what he wants it to be. - Zeth Lundy, 1 March 2005
From Slightly Confusing To A Stranger:
Spend an extended period of time in a big city, and you'll eventually get swept away by its organized chaos--the hordes
of people filling the crowded sidewalks, the cacophony of noises spilling out of subways, and stores, and taxis, and open
windows. Fueled by a pulsing heartbeat of movement, light, and sound, the city moves in a circadian rhythm. Think too much
about the fact that you are one in the midst of millions--a tiny dot (the grand scale of it all!)--and you'll understand
how easy it is to feel isolated amongst many, alone in your own head.
Jon DeRosa gets it--"We're all lost in our own way," and that sort of isolation is a theme that runs throughout
Aarktica's latest--written with NYC in mind-- Bleeding Light. Experimenting with elements of jazz, shoegaze,
electronics (loops and programming), and organic sound, he blends them together into something beautifully unique.
By equal turns atmospheric, desolate, (the opening track, "Depression Modern," with its slowly building layers-- "I
have seen this night before/Or else I made it up completely/I can never tell if I erased it/Or it erased me," feels
like it's on the verge of imploding.) lush, and almost poppy, DeRosa creates drifting landscapes of sound--austere
and soothing all at the same time. Mostly instrumental, the album slowly moves along on waves of droney guitars,
textures, deliberate loops and rhythms, and lush instrumentation--percussion, sax, and bits borrowed from Eastern
instrumentation readily apparent on the closing (and title) track, "Bleeding Light". When vocals do appear, they're
wrapped in melancholy and often heavily filtered, but DeRosa's voice shines through, especially on the gorgeous
"A Wash A Sea Goodbye It's Me."
Bleeding Light feels like a stream of consciousness, the individual voices silently drifting and flowing
underneath the frenetic energy of the city that is often overwhelming. Take a moment and stop--listen closely
and carefully--and you just might hear them. - SCTAS, 5 January 2006
From Sonitis Noctis:
Jon DeRosa creó Aarktica en 1998 en Brooklyn. Graduado de tecnología musical y
psicología en la NYU, Jon comenzó su carrera en los escenarios desde la adolescencia con
efímeros actos de hardcore y otros géneros abrasivos. Fue al descubrir el sonido de
Projekt (hay un artículo sobre este sello en el número 4 de Sonitus Noctis) que decidió
hacer otro tipo de canciones. Bajo los alias de Dead Leaves Rising y Pale Horse & Rider
graba temas de folk abatido, mientras que con Aarktica ha visitado todas las estaciones
entre el dreampop y el post-rock, siempre cargado hacia los medios tiempos y una
constante sensación de tristeza.
Su disco de 2002, con el kilométrico título Or You Could Just Go Through Your Whole Life
and Be Happy Anyway (Darla), y Pure Tone Audiometry (Silber, 2003), con la voz de Lorraine
Lelis (Mahogany) y variadas colaboraciones en la instrumentación, acercaron a
Aarktica cada vez más al formato de banda, consiguiendo un sonido más orgánico, a
veces próximo al Mike VanPortfleet, su compañero de escudería en Silber.
Bleeding Light sigue ese rumbo, pero en un nivel notablemente inferior al de sus
antecesores. Su mitad instrumental es demasiado árida para alterar, aunque sea un poco, el
estado de ánimo del escucha. Casi pide ser dejada como música de fondo mientras se realiza
alguna otra actividad. Es cierto que los discos de Aarktica siempre han exigido paciencia,
pero esta vez prevalece la sensación de no haber recibido suficiente sustancia a cambio
de la atención depositada en el álbum. Que DeRosa se encargara personalmente de toda la
labor vocal (su voz es susurrante y discreta, no la más indicada para soportar canciones
completas) e insistir en pasajes ambientales que nunca se disparan a otro plano, son
algunos de los puntos débiles de este disco.
“We’re Like Two Drops Separated by a Drowning” consigue que por comparación Clock
DVA suene emo. “Depression Modern” y “Twilight Insecta” son dos predecibles y
prescindibles paisajes sonoros, mientras que “Night Fell, Broke Itself” y “A Shadow
Knife (Draws the Bleeding Light)” presentan algunos matices, gracias a la inclusión de un
sax tenor y (en el caso de la segunda) percusiones sincopadas. La reputación de DeRosa
sólo se salva por “Bleeding Light”, que cierra el disco entre tañidos orientales, redobles
de batería y el adictivo mantra “everyone of us is lost in our own way”.
Aarktica tenía tiempo saliéndose con la suya, ya le tocaba sacar un disco
menor. No sería nada raro que Jon recuperara el toque en su siguiente entrega. - Nicolás Díaz González
From Stylus Magazine:
Sometimes you need to be in the right state to access an album. Don’t listen to Kid A with the
convertible top down on a summer’s day. Don’t pump vintage Mouse on Mars through the tinny speakers of Grandma’s
funeral. Similarly, you might not want to listen to Bleeding Light unless you are in a dark spot
emotionally and physically. If you feel sunny, you won’t identify with Jon DeRosa’s dour emo-leaning lyrics.
If the weather feels sunny and you’re active, the dolorous drones that sleep on the album will frustrate you.
But I’m pinned to the bed with a mangled ankle, and my life has been collapsing into predictable dramatics
lately, so Bleeding Light works for me. The opener “Depression Modern” sets the tone. The world’s saddest
synthesized organist numbly plods the same fuzzy note for a minute. A Doppler-effect electro-violin slides in,
mimicked by a quiet tenor sax. Static and feedback crackle—unexciting tips of the hat to shoegaze and glitch.
Finally DeRosa and a mumbling backing vocalist somberly moan about some vague loss.
The above description sounds disparaging—likely because through much of the album I simply didn’t sense the
emotional honesty behind the extreme gloom of the record. But I was dark myself, so the song covered me like a
blanket. It pinned me to the ground and poured chicken soup in my ears. Part of me resented the feeling that
I was being soothed by a sad aesthetic—artifice rather than a real emotion.
The words of a newly hired professional moper. It doesn’t matter if Aarktica’s sadness is “authentic” or not.
How can I judge that? I can’t indict on intuition. Here is the only criteria that matters: once they made their
artistic choice to convey a certain mood, do they convey it well? Aarktica does, for the most part. The guitar
lines are adequately elongated and dreary, drifting into Windy and Carl territory until an elegant, finger-picked
melody saves the band from copycatting. Down-on-their-luck sidewalk saxophones flare like cigarettes in the night.
And the steady drumming of Mike Pride (complemented by the skittering beat programming of Aaron Spectre) prevents
the songs from lapsing into total malaise.
When Aarktica decides to be emotionally dynamic, they succeed wonderfully. The centerpiece of the album,
“A Shadow Knife (Draws the Bleeding Light),” starts off normally. Another trip down Downer Drive.
But halfway through the track, the sax stirs itself. Then positively hopeful. The beats get more energetic until
the song emerges from its despondence into the (still somewhat gray) light of day. This song, like many,
benefits from a lack of lyrics. Aarktica was never a lyrics band. Their strength is ambience. The lyrics pin
the songs down. When he sings, DeRosa simply cannot escape banal dreariness.
This comes to a head on “A Wash a Sea Goodbye It’s Me.” Emo guitars crunch, a sax wails blandly, and you can
almost see the drummer having a catharsis while DeRosa repeats “Goodbye” monotonously. Shudder.
Despite my complaining, I do have a soft spot for the clever and complex drone-pop that Aarktica attempts.
It is a bold synthesis—marrying two genres with completely different dynamics. I suppose it could only work if
the mood was slow and sad. Could you imagine a twee drone-pop album? - Bryan Berge, 4 March 2005
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