Emuul brings patient drone to life with careful repetitions, and succeeds in an attempt to build something acutely iconic on his latest release. Free Structures doesn't drift or wander like a lot of drone music; its very purposeful motifs layer onto one another without reduction in volume and without compromising what is a very singular idea. I found this approach oddly immediate, and welcoming, despite the 17-minute running times of each piece.
I feel like maintaining a single drone—the harmonies and the identity created—is never as easy as it seems. It's very frustrating to try and control the same few notes for upwards of ten minutes without the ideas presented wearing thin. It's even harder when artists like Emuul (Kyle B. Iman) play with small bars of melody and simple loops that repeat endlessly, because a shorter, more staccato piece tends to tire itself out. All the nuances and interactions between notes turn grating when overexposed. It becomes more difficult to endure these small blissful sounds after a point; I feel totally satiated by them and can usually get nothing else out of them. On this album, that is not the case.
Free Structures is an album (very) vaguely themed around the rotation of the Earth (and other metaphors of universal cycles and rhythms), so repetition is an essential aspect to Emuul's approach. The first track, "Waiting For The Letdown," keeps a subsonic tremolo guitar melody sustained throughout the entire 17 minutes. As the song evolves, a few piano chords are dropped in, a harmonic drone in a higher register drifts into focus, and eventually back out, leaving only that initial melody once more. I feel entranced by it, however, not repulsed; its gentle progression suggests an endless meditation on something sublime, and hearing it over and over only serves to reiterate the importance of whatever thoughts cross my mind when I'm listening.
Iman introduces higher tones in the second song, "An Empty Measure," to the ever present guitars and abandons the pulsing motif for a more conventional slow chord landscape common in a lot of drone. Kyle defines the songwith alternately empty spaces and bassy rumbles, like thunder, hitting small peaks and valleys in a more subconscious approach to cycle and form than the other song had. It is the weaker of the two pieces in its indecisiveness, but it still feels intentional, as a companion to the other side; as a complement it plays like Emuul's resolved conscience; whatever grand idea he was wondering about on the first half has been figured out, and I'm just along to hear his reaction to it. It's about as simple as it can be, mining each little moment for whatever vague empathy it can.
Emuul's music pulls me along cautiously, and I feel more informed by the title than the music's own content, which is fuzzy and only suggestive of its wider implications. The music invokes a sure presence; it has a gravity to it that a lot of drone lacks, and an inner logic that holds it together. It's blurry to experience and difficult to unpack. But it invites me to listen again and again, and I find that I enjoy it more each time.
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