Lawrence English - Cruel Optimism (2017) [Hi-Res]

Perhaps the most ambitious and absorbing album yet from Lawrence English, featuring a whole host of friends and collaborators including Swans' Norman Westberg, The Necks' Chris Abrahams and Tony Buck, Mats Gustafsson, Werner Dafeldecker and The Angels of Light's Thor Harris. It's an arctic, ice-cold meditation rendered in the most beautiful drone and semi-orchestral variants - think somewhere between William Basinski, Akira Rabelais and Badalamenti at his most terrifying. A huge recommendation.
Lawrence English carries the weight of the world in the emotive blows of Cruel Optimism; his tortuous yet somehow triumphant follow-up to the Wilderness of Mirrors (2014) LP, which was conceived prior to the present socio-political sh*tstorm, and attempts to present "a meditation on these challenges and an encouragement to press forward towards more profound futures".
Inspired by the title of a critical text by American theorist Lauren Berlant, whose analysis of the contemporary crisis points to the elusive promise of neoliberalism - particularly its inherent sense of hauntological trauma - Cruel Optimism is offered by English as a reflection "on how power consumes, augments and ultimately shapes two subsequent human conditions: obsession and fragility", and does so in a way that viscerally resonates with the long-standing, recurring themes of his work: deferred ecstasy, textural decay and the way they affect perception.
Galvanising strength through collaboration, as opposed to the solo introspection of Wilderness., English elected to work with a number of his peers for this record, who all gauzily serve to enrich these recordings, which each carry the subtle, if distinct presence of plural spirits in the mix. Object Of Projection is especially hard-hitting, recalling Deathprod's life-changing Treetrop Drive with its looped refrains, albeit here submerged underneath a tonne weight of sonic detritus that triggers nostalgia and dread in the most evocative manner imaginable - perhaps the most astonishing 5 minutes in all of English's by-now sizeable catalogue of work.
English carefully consolidates every element on this album within the democracy of the soundfield; we may be able to discern the crucial gestures of Norman Westberg's clanging chops in Hammering A Screw or smudged into the soberly grand dimensions of Requiem For A Reaper/Pillar Of Cloud and the waking dread of Somnambulist, but, in effect, thru English's enigmatic processing, his ego is properly sublimated into the ether and as vital as any other to the record's sense of swelling, aching communal pathos.
Tracklist:
01.Lawrence English - Hard Rain
02.Lawrence English - The Quietest Shore
03.Lawrence English - Hammering a Screw
04.Lawrence English - Crow
05.Lawrence English - Requiem for a Reaper - Pillar of Cloud
06.Lawrence English - Exquisite Human Microphone
07.Lawrence English - Object of Projection
08.Lawrence English - Negative Drone
09.Lawrence English - Somnambulist
10.Lawrence English - Moribund Territories