Nosaj Thing - No Mind

October 21, 2020 - LUCKYME

Los Angeles sonic sculptor Jason nosaj thing Chung is back with his latest, a soft fractal carved in matte black marble, No Mind. Along with a website that uses images gathered from public webcams near the geographic locations of its visitors to provide an endless zoom-pool, Chung has provided four tightly spun tracks to get lost in. 

We enter a verdant, wet forest. The opening notes of ‘Opal’ slide in like a fine mist, familiar chords comfortably nestling together. The piece is brief, but it takes its time, every element in its right place. Distant percussion rings out, perhaps a chopped up ‘Soul Pride’ break, injecting a sense of urgency right before the lights dim and music fades. The canopy opens for ‘Mountain,’ allowing more upward mobility for chilly stretched synth-and-sampled lines. A looser percussive loop accompanies this time, hand drums with a slight groove relaxing the muscles and lengthening the spine.  

Just in time for the darker overtones and pulsing undertones of ‘Pressure Points.’ Nearly menacing tonal blips and haunted floor toms lay down a moody cadence as chords descend from the rafters, like frozen lines of maple syrup that turn into a fine mist if you look at them too long. A voice says “pressure,” and we don’t feel at ease, though we are enjoying ourselves. ‘No Mind’ heralds the end of the succinct but deep project with a glance back at the beginning. Shepard tones crisscross, nearing a tritone paradox; the notes both ascend and descend to reach equilibrium without seeming to move at all, like a slowly spinning barber pole stretching off to infinity. Voices and recordings and strings and synths are spun like candy floss, gently floating on top of the heavier, deeper bass frequencies. The natural and the unnatural become one, as digital noise and field recorded ambiance merge, like an artificial intelligence creating new imagery from found footage. 

With No Mind, Chung has created a small space that contains near limitless depth in all directions, a project that is much bigger on the inside than it appears. Maybe it’s just my new lockdown practice of guided meditation with Ofosu Jones-Quartey, but it does feel that Chung has been able to capture the feeling of letting go, of letting the mind choose its own path for just a moment, and it feels refreshing. Like a sensory deprivation pool for the couches of today and the dancefloors of tomorrow. It’s just what we needed. 🍍