During the more recent times from experimental sound worlds, and AJ Kimmel’s music contains the kind of raw emotion that few others in this space have repeated.
Under the Departure Street moniker, Kimmel has spent years immersed in long-form guitar composition. A constant creator looking to capture that moment above all else, which has seen him lean on the kind of emotional depth inspired by cinema. Kimmel has extended beyond the Departure Street project, too, namely in collaboration with droneroom’s Blake Conley as the equally excellent Rivers of Glass.
The Parisian returns with his latest Departure Street long-player, Into the Drop Zone. An album of tender wanderings and aloof stateliness. Essentially, it’s a record that demands you to leave all your troubles at the door in search of the kind of freedom this new world doesn’t really afford.
Kimmel’s songs feed into a tranquility that isn’t a world away from his Parisian counterpart, Daren Muti, however on Into the Drop Zone, there’s more of a curiosity that runs through these songs, stemming from the roots of improvisation.
Opening with Everything is a Dream, it’s a composition rising from the pits of despair. Each note feels like the sound of a heart breaking, and while that calmness of fresh air and open space is here, it’s a point reached through the miasma of uncertainty. You can feel it in the music.
Departure Street - Into the Drop ZoneWhile the likes of Come to Spin the Moon and Night Stones and the Quick Earth are orbital-laden compositions inspired by Six Organs of Admittance’s latest works, Another Soul Sings Unencumbered is less spatial, more lullaby; a gorgeous moment during Into the Drop Zone and one that slowly drifts through the air like a gentle spirit.
That same spirit can also be felt throughout Like a Bird Whispered in My Eat and The Perfect Center of Nothing; meandering sketches of melody drawn from the dark, quiet loneliness of night. Here, Kimmel creates the sound of cinema or, indeed, when cinema had time and space. These two tracks in particular feel influenced by Kimmel’s work alongside Conley.
The same could be said of the song titles; a definite lineage with the droneroom oeuvre, and Kimmel saves the best for last with Annihilation Was a Scary Thing. An eerie echo from the same vortex that has been a source of inspiration for Mark Nelson over the last 30 years.
With artists like Kimmel, with an ever-expanding body of work to boot, it’s hard to know where to start. From a cynical point of view, some may even discard it altogether, such as the mammoth task ahead. However, like the beguiling 2022 LP, Walking on Earth, Into the Drop Zone is an album that will hit the sweet spot given the right moment. That moment that commands calm, solitude and your undivided attention to reap the greatest rewards. Not many albums like this come around in a calendar year, but when they do, you seize the moment. And Departure Street’s Into the Drop Zone feels like one them.
Into the Drop Zone is out now via Audionautic Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.
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