released January 4, 2025
zakè – Caelum (Zakè Drone Recordings, 2025)
Caelum is the third entry in an ongoing series of longform, loop-based sound sculptures from zakè (aka Zach Frizzell), sustaining the tranquil beauty explored on Unfurled Works (2020) and Deep Into the Unknown, We Shall Endlessly Roam (2023). Its four pieces were selected from more than two dozen sketches born out of experimentation in the quiet hours, and refined through Frizzell’s signature treatments, which conjure new worlds from antiquated means.
“Caelum (No. 2)” is led by a cycle of breathy, mournful French horns that convey a wistful kind of hope, and a serene image of the infinity through which every soul passes. During its progression over nearly half an hour, bristly field recordings and faint harmonic textures provide graceful variation, creating the sense of life on a collapsed cosmic scale. “Caelum (No. 4)” features frequent collaborator Kévin Séry (aka From Overseas), whose saintly guitar tones perfectly complement the lilting strings of the main theme. This interaction of elements creates a finespun variation in every repetition, so that the central phrase resembles a celestial body against the horizon, offset by a degree or two with each rise and fall.
Frizzell cites a major inspiration for Caelum from his wife, whose particular appreciation of Orchestral Tape Studies (2019) led the two to discuss, during a long road trip to a friend’s wedding, how approaches to patient music could be revisited and refined. He notes, “In many ways, these arrangements feel like love letters, further deepened by the experience of that weekend with new and old friends, celebrating connection, with the knowledge of its impermanence and preciousness.”
“Caelum (No. 3)” maintains that sense of contained infinity, with blossoming brass harmonies in the dominant loop, underscored by haunting drone textures that ebb and flow across the backdrop. Experimental stalwart Benoît Pioulard here contributes a recording from a broken tape machine, whose plaintive flickering adorns the edges, mimicking the film gate of an old projector. A distinct somberness runs through the closing piece, “Caelum (No. 1)”, as a shadowy cello motif wanders like a hungry ghost, searching for resolution, and reverberant, bell-like tones howl across the background, approximating wind through an abandoned house.
The backbone of Caelum’s composition comprises old 78s, reel-to-reel tapes, and manipulated classical recordings, all of which contribute to its unique aura. As part of this release, the original four movements are mirrored by a set of reinterpretations by Slow Blink (aka Amanda Haswell), who takes each one deeper into deterioration with her own array of vintage analogue machines, guitar, keys, and hand-hewn processing. Haswell states, “Listening to Caelum was like being in a dream I had many moons ago; through repetition, as with the memory of a dream, discoveries are made that present a new way to understand the same idea.”
Common to the elegant works that form the two halves of Caelum is an overwhelming sense of the uncanny, like seeing footage of Yosemite from a hundred years ago, and feeling its eternity in contrast with human fragility. We decay at a scale beyond our easy comprehension, but can savor the comforts of routine while they exist, even as we watch them fade into warbling obscurity.
RIYL: William Basinski, Bibio’s Phantom Brickworks, The Caretaker, Benoit Pioulard, Altars Altars
Written, recorded, and produced by zakè
Additional textures and composition on Caelum (No. 4)
and Caelum (No. 1) by Kévin Séry [From Overseas]
Additional guitar textures and field recordings by
Benoît Pioulard via ‘gold & sand’,
intimatenoise.com
Caelum No. 2•4•3•1 are mirrored by a set of reinterpretations
by Slow Blink [Amanda Haswell], ('Decayed No. 2•4•3•1'),
taking each Caelum movement deeper into deterioration with
her own array of vintage analogue machines, guitar, keys, and
hand-hewn processing
Mixed and mastered at Kaleidoscope Tone Studio by zakè
Photography, design and layout by zakè
© 2025 Zakè Drone Recordings
℗ 2025 Past Inside the Present Publishing (BMI)
This is ZD-LOOP3
zakedronerecordings.com
zakedrone.com
pitp.us
◾️◾️◾️ REVIEWS
"Gently swinging temporal loops charged with tranquility and humanity, zakè aka Zach Frizzell transports us to a secret place where angels land to escape eternity.
A certain spiritual fragility emerges from the four parts of Caelum, an invitation to tranquility and meditation, to interiority connected to the immensity of the Cosmos. The strings turn to become hypnotic, heady loops with fluctuations carved in an organic material with a jagged finesse.
For her part, Slow Blink aka Amanda Haswell takes up the four movements of Caelum, to deliver a vaporous reinterpretation, where the strings turn into a mass of sounds escaped from a dreamlike orchestra touched by divine grace, an ensemble suspended from the clotheslines of a kingdom haloed with ephemeral stars. Sublime."
-Silence and Sound, FR
✦✦✦
"zakè has written a new album to get 2025 underway in his usual prolific fashion. As you would expect from this most masterful ambient leader, this is another immersive work that blends shifting and sweeping synthscapes with melancholic chord work, beautiful keys, delicate drones with even more lingering feelings of sadness. Another triumph if you ask us."
-Juno Records, UK
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