Latency

“What works reliably is to know the raw silk, hold the uncut wood. Need little. Want less. Forget the rules. Be untroubled.” says Ursula Le Guin in her translation of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. Inspired by this sentiment, as well as Halo’s time scoring a film for the Dutch art collective Metahaven, the more abstract aspects of Raw Silk Uncut Wood allow her to establish moods that are at once non-prescriptive and immediately visceral.

Working with collaborators Eli Keszler and Oliver Coates, Halo crafts an expansive environment that, at its most crucial moments, feels devoid of individual textures, as tones blend together until they envelop the listener, performing a meditative, cinematic experience. Working in abstraction leads to a deeper longing for touch and closeness. The tactile sensation of struck organ keys and bowed strings, wood and felt on drum heads. Smoke and dirt and stone. Febrile and tactile, hairy and hissy. A clover of highway onramps, a continuous flow, like old leaves melting on their way down a stream at the back of a house. Constant contradiction, the truth’s nowhere.