Recently I was told that that I hold myself back, suppress myself “rather than living a bit more freely or giving a chance for new things”. This wasn’t meant in a cruel way, but as an observation of my character and not putting myself out there, and it’s true. I’m a cautious and anxious person, liable to overthinking and moving more with the head than the heart. I don’t resent them for saying it, especially in the context of the moment, but it prodded a piece of intense self-loathing surrounding an aspect of my character that I see as somewhat outside of my control.
I spoke in my last piece for Fennesz’s Mosaic on the presentation of self and the fragmentary nature of our appearances to others. In that vein, Raf’s latest vision in FAÇADISMS fills a thrumming 50 minutes with a similar but subtly different analysis: that underneath is not the same, and more deeply, that the outside may remain static whilst great change happens beyond. Regardless of which is the case, one must walk inside in order to see, and understand the disconnect between the two.
In some moments within us there is nothing, as interior “Hollow” attests to. A few blustery guitar chords wash through the mix at the album’s nadir, cobwebbing itself across this emptiness that sits within, often overlooked by a cheery demeanour or forced smile. It exists in parallel to haunting opener “Broken Intensification” that seems set on a bleak trajectory towards dissolution. A distant mass of pained drones growing ever closer, it approaches with a looming demand to be seen through, longingly, forcefully.
Penultimate “Dispersion of Belief” sits in the same tonal range, slowly grinding forwards on the same idiosyncratic drone lines with an an attitude of ardour as its rumblings fan out in unconvincing testimony unable to betray its true self.
It isn’t all like this of course: “The Only Things That Belong To Us Are Memories” right in the heart of the record rises in glowing and burgeoning passages, climbing ever higher in its passionate crescendo of tender self-awareness. No matter the meta-stable nature of our personality or our presentation of it as such at any given time, there are always those deep interior shards of moments that make us what and who we are, the only things we truly own.
Similarly, “Control Your Soul’s Desire For Freedom”, though not quite as airy, ultimately, finds itself caught between a powerful expansive force heaving in escapist desire, and some measure of constraint. Despite growing ever larger and louder it feels capped somehow, the foundations set in place and outer walls bolted tightly on: it yearns to be seen and heard but the interior never passes beyond the frontage, the facade.
Over 13 years of writing for HearFeel I’ve tried, made some attempt to admit people to the architecture behind the front door in whatever meagre capacity I can muster in my less than adequate words projected through these musics I’ve heard. Though despite these efforts there remains a vulnerable, possibly cowardly person within who can never quite reconfigure the outside to match the inside, and thus it seems it may always be so.