Disquiet

The 16 tracks on *Still*, the new album from Portugal-based OCP, aka João Ricardo, explore variations on a specific territory, a droning nocturnal space, weathered and anxious. The title cut uses quick cuts to scraping sounds and an occasional beat-like thud to initiate the listener into a dank, threatening scenario. About a third of the way through “Still,” the beat semi-resolves to something more routinized, even lounge-like, but it’s never steady, just slightly more civilized.

“Diligent Effort” has a fairly certain beat from the start, and it gains heft as it goes, eventually haloed by tones that suggest a vapor trail; simple chords provide a more normalized musical listening experience, but really just emphasize how remote the album is — sonically, emotionally, texturally.

Arguably the highlight, “Always a Priority, Never an Option” has a denser atmosphere than many of the other tracks, but it resides nonetheless at an unhealthy distance, a premonition on the horizon. Beats enter more like Geiger ticks than rhythm, and those beats scramble to get some sort of metric in order, never quite congealing. Meanwhile the atmosphere has grown closer, louder, and more enveloping.

Here’s the full album:

Album originally posted at [opcabpol.bandcamp.com](https://opcabpol.bandcamp.com/album/still). More from OCP / João Ricardo, who’s based in Porto, Portugal, at [joaoricardo.org](http://joaoricardo.org/), [twitter.com/joaoricardo_org](https://twitter.com/joaoricardo_org), and [soundcloud.com/ocp](http://soundcloud.com/ocp).

To orient yourself with — or, perhaps, more to the point “in” — the track “re place” by Proxemia, it can help to focus on the transitions. During the course of a mere two and a half minutes the piece runs through half a dozen or so momentary states. Stereoscopic percussion pauses for a dial tone before a deep, bass thrum makes the suddenly tiny-seeming sounds succumb to an intense depth of field. This is after scatter relays give way to a cymbal, which in turn is cut off by a radio-dial spin that’s all harsh static.

Proxemia (aka José Rivera) makes each moment count, and in doing so challenges the ear to find a place to call home. Rather than clinging to a moment, it can help to ride the changes, to listen forward to the way scenarios shift. It’s a different way of listening, one focused on what’s between modes rather than on a given mode itself. The piece closes, tellingly, with a muted ripple effect, fading to nothing in a manner that makes “nothing” just another stage in the procession.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/proxemia](https://soundcloud.com/proxemia/re-place). More from Proxemia at [proxemiasound.net](http://www.proxemiasound.net/).