Review: Eliane Radigue - Adnos I-III

The pace of Adnos is meticulously judged. The swells and recessions within each of these pieces could be due to my ears delicately shifting focus between each strand of detail – thus subconsciously teasing certain frequencies to the fore and sending others into near silence – or they could be genuine evolutions happening in the music, at a speed akin to flower buds creeping open. Listener and composition dance like planet and moon in orbit; I entwine with its omnipresent hum, sometimes losing sense of Adnos as composition and subconsciously re-interpreting it as a sonic presence: a shadow draped over several of the walls, or a smoke curling upward in the centre of my lounge.

While at some points I cannot imagine any human intervention guiding these pieces forward – their unfolding seems to run in exquisite parallel with nature’s own blooming, reproductive inevitability – at others, I can perceive nothing but an organic body; the deep frequencies gliding up and down in respiratory arcs, or miniscule pumps of rhythm that nudge blood through the circle of veins. I am encapsulated in a moment of dream and paradox: liberated from flesh as a weightless particle powder floating through the air, and simultaneously an agonising accumulation of muscle tension, as a forceful transfixion within a solitary state.