Album Notes

Space does not exist without first being created and produced. Cartesian map makers created it when they deemed the world to be a knowable plain, with points easily plottable. We create it around ourselves when we need a break from the world around us. We need it, whether we acknowledge that space is all around us or not. We create it simply by being casual observers and looking at an image, responding “oh, that’s space”, it doesn’t exist until we call it that. Ultimately, the creation and production of space must yield an accompanying mood. When we create space out of a room, we paint our own space in the colors that will invoke the moods we want. We decorate and supply that space with objects, mementos, and relics. Our childhood room may contain playthings from our recent past, beginning an associative trope, which reminds us of the serendipitous moments of youth. A mood of childhood giddiness rhapsodically washes over us. Yet, there are far more expressive and powerful ways to create it than just pointing and defining something as space. And these methods ultimately quicken the journey to that mood that we want when we sit in our own space.

With the production of her music, Theory Anesthetic arguably demonstrates the best method for creating space—it exists when she slowly unwinds a chord progression to its most rudimentary tones, when she holds onto a note, series of notes or chords. Furthermore, the tone of each progression and each note is further augmented by delays, panning echoes, and washed in a drenched storm of reverb. Listeners who desire music that will fill an empty room may find Theory Anesthetic’s compositions the perfect friend to accompany such an empty space. Those chords sustain until they can sustain no longer, until they are almost ringing within the listeners’ head, long after they’ve been played. While we may be sophists and say that space has a multitude of meanings, none of which coincide with one another, one thing is for sure. Theory Anesthetic’s music not only may be described as spacey, it produces our own space for us. Above all else, mood exudes from every pitch and tonal register, from every polyphonic texture, and every chordal modulation. Sparse, electronically programmed beats accompany each note, and although the musical ideas seem simplistic, the process and method are cutting edge. Space and its musical invocation may be a very old concept, but Theory Anesthetic updates it. However, Theory Anesthetic is no modern day Cartesian. There are no easy answers in this music, no didactic moral lesson in her verses and choruses. Warning: those who expect to find music that will knee-jerk them into an emotional response will not find what they want here. Quite possibly, one concludes that we are given a space with which to form our own opinion about the music itself. We are given a gray day of ambiguity, and it’s perfectly beautiful.