Review Summary: The soundtrack to everyday life.
New Orlean’s Dth has a sound far removed from what’s normal. Rather than rely on the basic foundations of song structure and instrumentation, Dth rejects this common notion of music and opts to create his art by way of samples. The style, known as a “sound collage,” seeks to find the beauty and rhythm in everyday sounds and noises and transform them from commonplace sounds to pieces of art. These samples can vary from everyday conversations, vowels and consonants, to noises, such as someone slurping a drink. Accompanying these samples are traditional instruments, such as synths and acoustic guitars. But the music is in the samples, as the instruments serve only to set the mood and hold the work together, occasionally lending the track a sense of rhythm or cohesiveness.
The album’s first two tracks, “[!]” and “I’m Squeaking Everywhere” focus solely on everyday noises. The former is mostly comprised of samples of human conversations, finding all the unique sounds that a human produces throughout his or her life and putting it all together in a collage of sounds that’s held together by dreamy, strangely detached electronics that make it sound as if the noises are appearing out of the ether before they are abruptly snatched away and replaced by new ones. The second track, on the other hand, is based on sounds you are likely to hear around you, ranging from footsteps to the sound of a TV. Although this may sound boring, Dth transforms these familiar sounds and turns them into a delicate form of art that presents them in a new light, not as noises to be ignored but as forms of music and expression to be appreciated.
The next three tracks are much longer, but the concept remains the same. “I Always Feel Like Crying (For Mom)” revolves around a home movie following the life of a young couple and their two kids. The production really shines through on this track, as it makes the proceedings sound so delicate, so fragile and so precious, that the sounds the children make and the conversations the parents have are truly evocative and beautiful. On the other hand “I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day’s” material mostly deals with the sadness of human interactions, sampling heated arguments about feeling rejected in a family setting to the dead-end feeling of a bad job. Rather than being a downer, as the song title suggests, these strong, heavy emotions are turned into a celebration of human sentiments, presenting the sheer scope of human emotions as something to be appreciated and longed for. With the last track, Dth truly shines. This time around, the sample revolves around the simple concept of having various college students in a bar setting rate their day. Beginning with people just listing how they feel their day went, the song escalates as the students begin to realize just how happy their lives really are and a new understanding of life is reached. This transformation of trivial conversations into something deeper is what makes this song so powerful, as the small details in a person’s life become matters of great consequence to their happiness and well-being.
The end result is surprisingly powerful in the sheer emotional weight that the samples create. Though superficially the songs are all very simple, their real power lies not in jaw-dropping technical complexity, but in telling stories and finding the music in sounds we normally take for granted. People seeking an album with beautiful melodies or complex instrumental arrangements should look elsewhere, but for those willing to listen and give different forms of music a try, they will find a highly immersive and beautiful album in
I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day.
