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Occasionally, I encounter light spreading slowly. When red embers, separated from flames, cling to black charcoal amidst the remnants of burnt wood; when dazzling light, having lost its brilliance, flickers over water flowing slowly like mercury on the road; when the early morning sun hangs, having lost its speed, amidst dense particles and tree branches in the forest mist. I know that such situations do not actually slow down the speed of light. It's also uncertain whether the 'slow spread' created by such scenes can be interpreted in terms of temporality. However, I am captivated by the fact that light, which always approaches instantaneously with bright luminosity and swift speed, can sometimes linger slowly in one's gaze with a low intensity, as if fading away.
The sound Arles creates resembled those slow lights. Whether in a performance with only an acoustic guitar and microphone, or in a setting with numerous effects carefully in place, his sound seemed to float and linger within the space it was created, rather than powerfully sweeping past the ear. As his voice, possessing an unfathomable depth, and strings, meticulously plucked and resonating, along with effectors looping the lingering echoes that reverberate through the ears and body according to their own rules, filled the concert hall like a thin mist (薄霧), a question suddenly arose: 'Why do your sounds try to linger here, even though they possess such delicate forms, as if they could vanish at any moment without consequence?' The slowly spreading light stops its brief deceleration and chooses to either sharpen or disappear. The song ends, the performance concludes with applause, and the instruments, microphones, and cables vanish. It doesn't feel real that the light, the sound, had been there.
Perhaps that's why. Listening to Arles's first album [Those Rays Which Never Die], I am particularly reminded of the word 're-creation' rather than 'recording'. It's not about capturing something that existed and making it audible again, but an attempt to somehow re-create something that wishes to linger but cannot. A repetition carried out even while knowing that what is re-created will not linger. Beautiful melodies emerging at some point. Sounds of nature, from an unknown source. A voice resembling light dust slowly spreading in a vacuum of zero gravity. The sad song, the sun. Your favorite endless sound of scenery. Your beloved madness and sin. An angel walking through a toxic haze. The coming curtain of winter. Sound and language re-create all these things before us, while simultaneously disappearing once again into a long, slowly unfolding time.
The two musical axes of folk and ambient simultaneously sustain [Those Rays Which Never Die] while encroaching upon each other, breaking down boundaries. Arles doesn't hesitate to place simple yet profound guitar melodies at the forefront, but he doesn't let them determine the song's structure beyond a momentary shimmer. Sounds captured through field recordings and low-lying white noise fill the corners where the melody briefly recedes, creating a space with indistinguishable boundaries, yet it's not a space of mere darkness that even engulfs Arles's voice and guitar. The antagonistic interplay between genres that cannot be easily defined once again begins to re-create a slow light. A light beautifully spreading from somewhere, with no discernible beginning or end.
Someone might perceive this music as though it could vanish at any moment, while another might feel it continues endlessly. Whichever the case, the unidentifiable light re-created by Arles continues its slow pulsation, circling within [Those Rays Which Never Die]. This ambiguous re-creation may even transcend the nature of 'recording' inherent in forms like the album or music itself. To remember it, to reconfirm the ripples it left in my heart, I walk back into that slow light.
Jung Gu-won, Editor-in-Chief of Weiv
<Credits>
All songs Produced, Written, Recorded, Arranged, Performed, Mixed by Arles
Additional Mixing and Mastering by Kim Haewon
Album Design by Jeon Yongwan
Photography by Lee Okto
Author: Arles
Publisher: Mirrorball Music
