Memoria (LP)

Memoria, Carmen Villain's latest album on Smalltown Supersound, begins like an opened valve; exhaling flute chords slowly fill a vast sonic landscape as an invitation for the listener to slow down and enter a state of deep listening. It's an introduction that guides expertly into an album of decelerated, spectral dub, which shimmers, growls and decays across the narratively ordered seven tracks. In this regard, Memoria picks up where Villain left off with 2022's Only Love from Now On, though the current album's focus is sound as memory – and memories as morphing, non-static imperfections. Repetition functions as memory retold; processing degrades and reshapes sound, and abstraction allows a kind of freedom from linearity.

For Villain, memory in sound appears to sit comfortably behind the mixing console of a dub lab, expertly and unpredictably controlling volumes, textures, filters and all other parameters, known and unknown, in an ever-mutating recall. Available on clear vinyl.