Secret Boyfriend – “Memory Care Unit” – [Blackest Ever Black]

Kai Sync   4/6/2016   12-inch, A Library

Secret Boyfriend’s (Ryan Martin) second album, released 2016, is a lo-fi ambient trip into the vastness of live improvisational excursions with synthesizers and drum machines based on melancholia and surrounding desolation. The tracks consist of slow loops and drone soundscapes done with oceans of dark ambient synths with occasional non-traditional electronic drum patterns and vocals that are slightly modified along the way. Or, the musician is trying to detach himself from the actual conscious music making as much as possible to reflect the translucent memories. There’s even a trace of slow post-punk doom and gloom in some tracks such as in the track Stripping At The Nail where a Joy Division like bass strumming and undressed vocals provide the focal point. This is a record that initially sounds sparse but after more listening sequences it opens up with musical vectors pointing out the theme of fading memories and meditational introspection – consider it Zen about unconscious music making on the borderline of fading out of precise existence.