Darren McClure is a Northern Ireland sound artist, now living in Matsumoto, Japan. He’s released a new album called Slow Up, Speed Down which is out now via Audiobulb. He explains: “The tracks on this album were all assembled during 2021, with a deliberate focus on slowness, space and stasis. My goal was to construct pieces that were less detail-oriented, more smudged and blurred, like distant indistinct sounds carried by the wind.
For this reason, sound sources were often pitched down and time-stretched into elongated drones, while trying to maintain harmonics that simmered just under the surface. These buried melodies are intended to be covert, hidden messages to the listener’s ears.
I wanted to create tracks that implied motion, but a subtle motion in otherwise stillness, like the illusion of fluidity in a heat haze. Mostly, I wanted to make an album of unhurried music that was happy taking its time, each track existing in the moment, slowing up and speeding down.”
Check the full streaming below.