Disquiet

Three tracks trace a dawn-like arc on Pausal’s new self-titled net-album on the netlabel Highpoint Lowlife. The pieces individually move from near-silence through a creaky murmur through an enveloping warmth that grows and grows. This sense of a real-world soundtrack is abetted by cricket chatter on the opening entry, “Heroes=Dogs,” in which rich, long chords suggest a solo for organ (MP3). The world peeks out of the second track, too, “Songs from a Cloth Pocket,” in which birdsong plays hide and seek amid the ebbs and flows of swelling synthesized drones (MP3), before those drones begin — slowly, mind you — to take on the quality that might — again, only possibly — be mistaken for — hold your seat — a melody; a light, tension-building bustle of what could be orchestral strings would be obvious were they not employed with such economy. The third track, “Place,” is a kind of drone chamber music in which little motifs, akin to minimalist repetition, gather in layers that overlap to form varying permutations (MP3); if you close your eyes — and this is the sort of music that makes you want to close your eyes — you might mistake it for some pastoral moment in Debussy. More info at highpointlowlife.com and pausal.net.

By Marc Weidenbaum