in a sense is the second project by Boston to Los Angeles experimental producer Valeria Zaklinskaya, operating under the moniker Velf. Constructed of five unique soundscapes, the project serves as a technical and emotional follow-up to 2017’s Pernicious Serenity that highlights Zaklinsakaya’s growth as an expressive composer and technical producer. A Berklee graduate, Velf is a member of Orange Milk Records’ lineup of like minded ambient and noise artists that specialize in abstract tape projects filled showcasing the limits of industrial, noise, and experimental composition as a whole. Their line up focuses on expanding the possibilities of composition into a world influenced by both the ever growing technological tools of the music industry alongside the lessons of contemporary champions of the space such as Ben Frost, Holly Herndon, Daniel Lopatin, and Tim Hecker.
The project as a whole occupies a unique space amongst the repertoire of active artists in this community. The record as a whole constantly toes the line between bliss and chaos: moments of calm are peppered with unstructured rhythmic color that threatens to snap in an instant. Pieces such as “Shrivel” and “Chimera” exemplify this dichotomy effectively, with the disruption of ambient melodies through briefly distorted explosions serving as the primary vehicle through which each song progresses. As both pieces assuage themselves, the return to tranquility forces the listener into a state of distrust, anticipating the shifts that shattered those same soundscapes in the beginning of the track.
Throughout the album, Zaklinskaya demonstrates an incredible diversity in the mediums that are used to form the album’s foundation, serving as a melodic focal point that interruptions are allowed to orbit around, creating the atmosphere of the project as a whole. “Revelation” initiates the journey for listeners with a layered melody of square-shaped Moog waveforms on top of generated haphazard drums. As soon as a listener has grown accustomed to the cadence of the piece it flips, pivoting towards soft synthesized strings, colored with swells, pianos, chimes, and the scattered drilling of roto-toms and crushed digital hat taps. “Innocence” offers the greatest departure from its neighbors as the album moves forward. After a marching moment of sharp pianos dancing over the deconstructed remains of the previous two tracks on “Chimera,'' the song spins itself downward to make room for the plucking guitars that emerge for the first time as the track transitions. A calm focused composition surrounded by the flutterings that have defined the album as a whole, the cleanliness of the first guitar notes become overwhelmed and more distorted as the piece rises towards its climax.
As a whole, in a sense garners an intense and nebulous soundscape, placing listeners in a world where they find themselves constantly realigning their focus to catch a fleeting moment as it whizzes past. Notably less abrupt more yet compositionally effective than Pernicious Serenity, the album as a whole is an exciting step forward for Zaklinskaya as a sculptor of soundscapes and implementer of ambitious sonic experiments, showing potential for projects to come.
