FEATURING Nexus by Mohammad Reza Mortazavi, released by Latency in 2025. Listen / Buy direct "Particle" "Swamp" TRANSCRIPT The first thing I hear is time: the time that has passed since I first heard this artist and since I decided to feature them on the very first episode of this show. Now, five years later and fifty episodes in, the artist is back and I have returned to the place where it all began. And how appropriate, on this occasion, which like any anniversary was bound to make me reflect on the passage of time – how appropriate that this would be the music to ring it in, as this music is effectively about the passage of time: this is what it seems designed to make us hear. And nowhere is this more true than in this song, which is just a pulse, tapped out on a drum, not quite as regular as a metronome but just as unrelenting. And in a way that this artist's music always does for me, I feel like I am hearing simultaneously time moving forward, but also standing still. Paradoxically, in this music that is nothing but rhythm, that is nothing but marked time, I feel that I have been lifted out of time – that past, present, and future have collapsed – that I have been transported to the eternal now – and that maybe the passage of time is an illusion, a shadow play on the screen of our consciousness, and somehow this hypnotic thrum has lifted the veil on the whole charade. Or maybe it's just that this anniversary has got me in a contemplative mood. Because as much as this music reminds me that five years have passed, it also makes me feel like no time has passed at all. I'm still here, listening closely, feeling just as affected by this artist's music as I was then, so much so that I am compelled to write about it, to let others know about it, so that they might feel it too. I can't hear this music without feeling like nothing has changed. But that's not true, of course. So much is different; so much is new. Which is remarkable, that even for an artist limited to a single, percussive instrument, they are still finding new forms of expression, new arrangements of sound, new ways of surprising and delighting our ears. I honestly have no idea how this sound is even produced, what strange mix of movements is being used to make this drum come alive. It gives the impression of a thousand hands, all converging, fingers rapping, knuckles cracking, fervently tapping and scratching out a beat. And below it all, a steady and heavy thumping, anchoring everything in place – except it's not actually steady at all, being ever so subtly off-kilter, such that just when you think you've internalized its pulse, it hiccups and skips a fraction of a beat, shifting the song's center of gravity just an inch but transforming its orbital motions entirely. This music has always had for me this mesmerizing, trance-like quality, no doubt brought on by its seemingly infinite but never quite identical loop, an all-too-human conjuring of an unending spell. But really, in a way, this is what all music does for me, even music that is much more varied and dynamic: again and again, I find myself bewitched, suspended in time as the music moves around me. This is, I suppose, why I listen to music, and, I suppose, why I am inspired to make this show. I am always chasing this feeling, and when I find it I just want to stay there and hold everything else still, to marvel at the music and preserve it in amber for everyone to see. I still don't understand why music does this for me like no other medium can. But I am grateful that it does, and just like this music, I hope it never stops.
