Review Summary: Repetitious perfection.
It's strange getting older. Not even in an exclusively existential sort of way, either. It's the way that you begin to notice that climbing the steps at work is getting a bit harder on your joints, or when you notice that your kids are starting to argue with you and actually
winning. I have just found that time slowly whittles away at you until there isn't much left. All of the sudden, I feel as though those defeated-looking forty-year old men walking around the grocery store with their wives aren't so different from me. The most frightening thing about all of this is that it's not really something that you can fight off without regressing in maturity. It begins small, but eventually becomes a full-blown identity crisis for someone that has spent much too much time worrying about the future but not enough time preparing for it.
Dropsonde is the ambient album that wards these thoughts away, giving me a reprieve from the self-inflicted anxiety. The endless questions about financial security and health concerns cease, and I just allow myself to get transported to a place that is simply my own. No one else knows how to get there, and the only darkness present is the cinematic feel of songs like "Warmed By The Drift". Biosphere successfully crafted an album that has movements that speak to me in all aspects; the warm, tonal transitions in opener "Dissolving Clouds" are quite different from the militaristic drums that begin "Fall In Fall Out", but there is never one moment that takes me out of it.
Dropsonde is one composition to me from start to finish, never listened to out of order or piece by piece. I don't know if that's because it holds so much meaning to me or it's because I am terrified it will lose its hold over me. Whatever the case, it is seventy minutes in which nothing else has the ability to consume my thoughts, enveloping me like the weirdest security blanket in the world.
It isn't until the science fiction-like effects on "Altostratus" that I begin to notice that my chest isn't as tight as it generally is. The undulating repetitiousness throughout the tracks relax me more than meditation ever could, although it's increasingly hard to articulate why that is the case.
Dropsonde whisks me away to a place where the darkness that greets me is not malevolent; it is a comforting emptiness where I don't need to bullshit my way through a meaningless conversation with a co-worker or pretend to be interested that my third cousin twice-removed is having a birthday party. I often find that my significant other and I fight through the muck to enjoy the beautiful moments of life, much like anyone else these days. The reason that this album means so much to me is that it represents the ability to get away from the stress of getting older, while still being able to come back completely composed and ready for a new day. When the last track "People Are Friends" begins, it has a distinctive faraway quality to it that quietly adds in muffled voices towards the end. I just close my eyes and imagine that I'm floating away from my very own world, and those voices are greeting me back on the other side, where I still have immense purpose. To say that this album reinvigorates my lust for life is not enough, but I doubt any words could sum up what
Dropsonde really means to me. I'm still scared as hell of getting older, but Biosphere has given me an auditory experience to escape it for just enough time to adequately handle it. That's all I can ask, to be smart enough to accept it but stubborn enough to keep that flame burning.
