- Haunted elegies from a rising figure in the ambient underground.
- Since putting out his first record in 2020, Adam Dove has been one of the most exciting figures to emerge in the world of experimental music and sound design. Dove's music is part of a new school of ambient producers (think Perila or Ben Bondy) who can turn beatless soundscapes into sites of confrontation. This is not music that floats in the background but rather demands attention, emphasising dissonance as much as resonance. He's released some excellent records on labels like Alien Jams and Cafe OTO's in-house label and turned in mixes for the likes of The Ransom Note and FACT. And now he releases his debut album, Endless Path of Memory for John Talabot's Pensaments Sonics label. Dove builds the record around juxtaposition, where moments of gentle beauty are broken down to reveal a lingering violence—only to be made beautiful again.
"Bury it Deep Inside Yourself" captures this tension poignantly. Dove starts with a melancholy viola line for nearly a minute, before cutting it off with harsh, minor chords and long drawn out keys. It's an abrupt, psychoanalyst-triggering pivot that moves the track from heart wrenching neo-classical to eerie ambient. He flips the emotional script on "Replica" where a sluggish funeral march is transformed into a sequence of lightly fizzing ascending chords.
These twists and turns lend Endless Path of Memory a dramatic momentum that drives the record forward. On a track like "Tales," Dove creates something like ambient punk. Gently pulsing pads are consumed by feedback and reverb alongside a ricocheting synth that sounds like a ping-pong ball being battered against a wall by Serena Williams. The theatrics come to a crescendo on the album's centrepiece "My Eyes Looked Dull and Sunken," made with Montreal sound artist Racine. The two loop elegiac player piano and Spanish guitar lines before breaking them down in real-time. By the time we get to the empty and austere second half punctuated with raw shots of sub bass, the song has become genuinely bone-chilling.
Writing unnerving music is not new for Dove. His previous records painted with a similar sonic and emotional palette.Where Endless Path of a Memory differs is its hi-fi finish. On both Crawl and Origin, the sounds were muted and a bit dusty. But, as Dove explained to nina, he wanted to create a more intense "sense of disquiet." Endless Path of Memory is precisely that—ten forcefully disquieting songs. But Dove doesn't give up on hope. The tracks here also have a lingering residue of optimism that comes in fits and starts, providing glimmers of what comes after the disquiet.