As 2020 comes closer to its end, I find myself returning to an album that says it was released in July, but feels solidified in my “this has been my favorite for years” list. Out from Deathbomb Arc, Palimpsest by Lauren Bousfield is perfectly attuned to how I’ve felt on most days this terrible year. A single song can swing so wildly from erratically noise-driven breaks to hard thumping, soul-driving rhythms that it lulls me into a kind of messy trance-state.
“Adraft,” the second track, is where I recommend people start when checking out this album for the first time. The song’s moody, soft bass drives through many stages of buildup and teardown to construct a deep, foundational atmosphere that holds the rest of the album together. The voice is a rhythm element that often drives into brilliant epochs of breakbeat modular madness. But it never feels out of control or, perhaps more importantly, out of character for the album’s palette.
The precision of Palimpsest’s tone is impressive. Even the end of “Clean Strategic Narratives. . .”, which is a slow and overdriven decline into a full wall of chaotic noise, leads to the calm and reliable bass rhythms of the next track, “Another World is Possible - Presented by US Bank”. Familiarity lulls you in and you’re bobbing your head, and the next track after that starts, which is also beautifully rhythmic and soothing in a way, and then the wheels fall off the car, and the boards break loose from the floor you’re standing on, and the windows shatter all around you – but you kinda like it. It feels comfortable. Like a blanket of saw wave chaos.
Palimpsest is an album that creates images. Cinematic and orchestral, rage and chaos. The thrashing breaks fall away, shifting almost to the back of your mind, and the violins of “Crawling Into A Fireplace Cackling” come to the front of the album, preparing you for the title-track end. For a moment you’re running through a rainy night, out of breath with freedom, and when you stop the entire world unfolds in shattering trance gates above you. Life flashes, it’s quick, and everything collapses into chaos again, but the voice is an anchor and you make it through to the next track.
The images, the cohesive (but broken) drum work, and the album’s carefully designed sound palette all come together to make this album work. In previous releases, like 2017’s Fire Songs, a similar chaos is used, also to great effect, but at the core of Palimpsest is a more considerate maximalism and expert sound design.
Lauren Bousfield is a composer and sound designer. Palimpsest was released in 2020 on Deathbomb Arc. For more of her releases, check out her Bandcamp page.