Beyond The Reach Of Light

Beyond the Reach of Light is San Francisco, CA based Field of Fear's sophomore album. Following up the album Ashes where Zercoe used metadata from photographs of places the fires ravaging California ruined to inform the sound on that equally punishing tape, Zercoe's field recordings around Oakland were hollowed and used to modulate different effects on this record - allowing a sense of synchronicity tied to place to prevail and nodding towards the material conditions that often exacerbate latent mental health symptoms. Zercoe's mentor David First's approaches to composition and LaMonte Young's experiments in just intonation show up as red glowing lights beckoning us through the bardo as much as Boris and Suno)))'s heavy hands on Zercoe's shoulders. The album arrives and ends on a meditative sine wave - a nod to the looming sense that this depression, while temporarily lifted, will return as it always does. A faithful dog. Another winter. A record that has been written and will continue to be written in terminal loops. Where Beyond the Reach of Light hints towards any catharsis is that it is over. Zercoe states that he has a difficult relationship with this record - as it stands as a record of a harrowing spell of depression and doesn't arrive at a tidy or even hopeful conclusion. The idea of pressing this onto wax aligns with the Cincinnati based record label Whited Sepulchre Record's philosophical approach towards production. Every record is a tomb where the ghosts of our former selves live - every spin is a form of necromancy.