Adrian Knight: Fly By Night
Thanatosis Produktion

Much of the double-CD release Fly By Night sits comfortably within the ambient genre, but it also ventures into other zones. Originally issued as a digital-only release on Adrian Knight's now dormant Pink Pamphlet in 2014, the set's now available in physical form courtesy of the Stockholm imprint Thanatosis Produktion. That the collection ranges across stylistic lines doesn't surprise, given its creator's background. The Uppsala-born and Brooklyn-based Knight isn't an ambient artist per se but a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and active member of multiple groups; his pieces have been performed by the likes of Bearthoven, R. Andrew Lee, Red Light Ensemble, and TIGUE, and his material's been released on Cantaloupe, Irritable Hedgehog, Innova, and Galtta Media. One of the outfits of which he's a member is Synthetic Love Dream, whose self-titled album appeared on Galtta in 2014, and an additional connection to the label comes by way of a saxophone cameo by SLD's David Lackner on “Pink Pamphlet 5,” Fly By Night's closing track.

Working with electric guitar, voice, Rhodes, percussion, tape and digital treatments, Knight recorded the material at home; consistent with that much of it exudes an informal, explorative quality, the producer himself characterizing the pieces as “chance moments of layered sequences coalescing into harmonic contexts I could otherwise not have envisioned.” However much they might suggest a sketch-like quality, the tracks have a finished feel, even if some are studies and experiments of a kind. Guitar explorations are central to the project, but recordings made with other instruments also appear.

At twenty-seven and twenty-three minutes respectively, “Abide With Me” and “Till Minne Av (prototype)” naturally tower over the other seven pieces, which range from three to fifteen minutes. With a throbbing bass as an insistent undercurrent, the first of the two wends its ultra-minimal way serenely, its stark presentation evoking the near-silence we associate with deep space; the other's even more becalmed, its stripped-down design allowing glistening guitar textures ample room to ebb and flow. The longer meditations are nicely balanced by shorter ones, the briefest of which, “Downwind,” engages for its subtly supplicating, almost hymnal tone—even if it ends rather too abruptly. “Midnight Zone” appeals for the naturalness of its timbres, electric guitar and Rhodes shadings here combining for seven minutes of soothing calm.

Elsewhere, Knight augments the hushed ambient tones drifting through “Ohio Standard” with tiny accents of static, the treatment making the material sound as if it's emerging from a vinyl as opposed to digital or CD surface. “Pink Pamphlet” individuates itself by underpinning its subdued drift with wordless vocal textures that lend the soundscape a ghostly melancholy, whereas “Comblé (prototype)” accomplishes something similar by giving its cavernous reverberations a faint industrial tinge. At album's close, “Pink Pamphlet 5” changes things up in presenting a somewhat New Age-styled facade, with steel guitar-like phrases intermingling with angelic vocal whispers and, near track's end, the purr of Lackner's sax.

March 2020