Creatively, Ilyas Ahmed has always coloured outside the lines. The Portland-based artist’s solo canon, led by With Endless Fire (2012) and I Am All Your Own (2015), exquisite journeys in terrestrial dream-folk that few others have replicated. Ahmed has moved beyond, too, with A Dream of Another (2013). A release that, at times, is so quiet that you can almost hear the blood running through your veins. It’s these unique contours and colours that make his involvement in the latest manifestation of Grails so crucial. The post-rock veterans, continuing to move the needle at each time of asking.
Ahmed’s collaborations have also reached far and wide, including releases alongside Grouper, Golden Retriever and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. His latest relesase, Things Left Unseen, alongside Yellow Swans’ Pete Swanson, who himself has been an underground sentintal for the best part of three decades. Where noise overlords, Wolf Eyes, spawned a world where the likes of Yellow Swans, Growing, the Grey Daturas and many others thrived, it was a scene that posed a vital question: to which other extremes can modern-day art be pursued?
The answers was many, of course, and on the back of Swanson’s gadget wrangling mind-fuckery that reached its height on 2013’s Punk Authority, he and Ahmed lock horns after knowing each other for 20 years before committing anything to tape. Things Left Unseen, the result of their respective worlds colliding like a supernova.
Pete Swanson & Ilyas Ahmed: Things Left UnseenConsisting of two long-form compositions, Things Left Unseen begins with Room of One. A union of Swanson’s abrasive noisescapes and Ahmed’s languid guitars, this 12-plus minutes creates a shimmering environmental resonance. You can almost envision waves lapping up to shore, with a moodscape that demystifies the turbulence in your mind. Searching sonics that galvanise the emotional strength indicative in much of Ahmed’s solo work. And here he brings something out in Swanson’s work that we’ve not really heard before.
On After Leaving, Swanson takes the reins for something more cerebral. The kind of blurred orbiting that forms a backdrop likened to a score for William Gibson’s Count Zero. Wisps of static, flashing before a crescendo of warm distortion rushes through the speakers. It’s the closest thing that Swanson has made to Yellow Swans’ pinnacle moment, Going Places.
But make no mistake, Things Left Unseen is fundamentally its own thing. Two of underground’s more peripheral figures, combining for something that hits like a gateway drug. And on the subject of gateways, Swanson and Ahmed each reach new points in a collaboration that has more room to manoeuvre and flourish than it already has. Things Left Unseen, a new kind of dream-state with the potential and likelihood to offer so much more.
Things Left Unseen is out Friday via Geographic North. Purchase from Bandcamp.
