Qeluga - Blooms Among Cognition

Qeluga

Blooms Among Cognition
self-released; 2013

3.9 out of 5

By Matt Jensen

If you want to really enjoy subtle ambient music I would recommend listening to Blooms Among Cognition from Qeluga on a comfy pair of high-end open-back headphones plugged into high-end DA converters. Trust me. If you can make the jump, take it. I can't explain how much better it is listening to Blooms Among Cognition like this rather than from my laptop speakers. One of the reasons for this is that the four songs on the album swim in the nuances and subtleties that make up sound. The pleasure is in micro, it’s in the half a db of volume that is raised on a particular drone or the flickering of an anomaly that diverted your attention. This is also music that feels like a mantra. Its warm tones are often repetitive and if you start relaxing when listening to the music you may soon start to forget that the music is even playing. Perhaps that’s kind of what Royce Hobbs the man behind Qeluga had in mind. He explains: “Sound is my tool to generate access points within my unconscious mind. In order to discover anything about myself, I needed to produce the most aurally pleasing sounds that I felt reflected my true positive states.”  The one thing that is arguable about this statement is that the sounds didn't always feel positive. Take for instance the last piece called “Part D.” The song feels like a hum that is reflecting the ether of the subconscious. It is like a road  map that connects the electronic synapse or the innate primordial biology that we can't penetrate with our thought alone. After listening to this album it didn't necessarily make me happy like when I listen to Vampire Weekend whose music makes me want to get up and go.  What it did was make me want to meditate or contemplate deep questions that if us humans did all day we would either be chronically depressed or frustrated. That being said if you do meditate on the sounds I could see how it might be enlightening.

 The best case of this is the first song called “Part A” which sounds not unlike something you might hear from Auburn Lull if they were more minimal. The second piece entitled “Part B” creates tones of dissonance and just enough white noise to make you create a meditative concoction of sound. “Part C” is the longest piece on the album and takes what sounds like a vocal sample and loops it until it’s no longer recognizable. This eventually serves as the white noise, which creates a pleasant dichotomy against the more uplifting, ethereal sounding strings.

This is an album that is great to listen to if you feel like you can't pay attention to anything for too long. It won't necessarily make you happy but in my opinion it will at the very least slow you down, let you relax and give you time to purge your thoughts.

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