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Cassette
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SOD 142CS
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Remnants is an album marked by the ambiguity of presence and absence. The pieces, recorded using minimal equipment in what Ayami Suzuki describes as a ritual-like atmosphere, began as a way of processing the loss of her father in 2019. But beyond this, they also come to speak to the ways in which loss changes peoples' relationship with someone, and their experiences of the world. Indeed, the experience of loss is not marked merely by a single event, but is instead a process that unfolds over time. Despite the other's absence, a particular location, the smell of a certain brand of tobacco, a look on a friend's face -- traces such as these are enough to bring about a renewed presence. It is through these subtle traces and remnants, encountered over time, that listeners come to understand loss as not only the acceptance of absence, but the recognition of a continued presence. As Suzuki says, "this is not a solo album." Its creation was instead shaped by an ongoing dialogue, the continued elaboration of a complex and ambivalent relationship. At once melancholic, warm, and embracing, it is this ambiguity, these subtle traces, that Suzuki's compositions speak to. These are not merely the sounds of mourning, but instead have been shaped by the evolving dialectic of presence and absence into something far more subtle and haunting.
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