{"id":96211,"date":"2023-04-27T15:30:41","date_gmt":"2023-04-27T19:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/panm360.com\/?post_type=records&p=96211"},"modified":"2023-05-03T12:41:03","modified_gmt":"2023-05-03T16:41:03","slug":"nondi_-flod-city-trax","status":"publish","type":"records","link":"https:\/\/panm360.com\/en\/records\/nondi_-flod-city-trax\/","title":{"rendered":"Nondi_ – Flood City Trax\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How do you bear witness to the loss?\u00a0Of a loss which is unknown to us but which we nevertheless know is irrecoverable?\u00a0And how do you do it with music?\u00a0On\u00a0Flood City Trax<\/em>, producer, and electronic artist Nondi_, aka Tatiana Triplin, explores this affective desert.\u00a0Completely by sound.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the artist’s musical profile has been built online.\u00a0She draws inspiration from genres such as\u00a0footwork,\u00a0breakcore\u00a0and Detroit techno, which she experiences on the web.\u00a0This online mode of sourcing and creation comes out very clearly in Nondi’s music.\u00a0It gives off an impression of dreamy loneliness, which also has something to do with the physical place of its creation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The artist says of her album that she seeks to capture the feeling of life in Johnstown, particularly the isolation of poverty there.\u00a0The history of this city is dark: several floods ravaged it, in 1889 and in 1977 (hence the nickname “Flood City,”) and left a tragic mark from which it is still struggling to recover.\u00a0\u201cThere is very little to do, the buildings are destroyed or condemned.\u00a0Everything is old, but at the same time, it’s as if the past has disappeared,” she explains on her Bandcamp page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is therefore a deep feeling of desolation that Tatiana Triplin manages to communicate on this album, so much so that we almost have the impression of having lost something without really knowing what. To have escaped something that escapes us. This melancholic loss, of which even the object is unknown, haunts the music but, at the same time, pushes it to exist. Triplin is right in going lo-fi, this intentional data loss fits the concept perfectly. The same is true for the album cover, designed to look like a yellowed and found historical photo, a little creepy, just enough to sow doubt. A lost story among many others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the sound side, we have here a talented artist.\u00a0Nondi_ crafts ethereal atmospheres borrowing from genres we know (techno, breakcore, glitch), but she makes them almost extraterrestrial.\u00a0The beginnings of the first piece leave this impression of being inside a\u00a0pinball\u00a0game lost in space.\u00a0In fact, the whole album sounds a bit like retro-indie-experimental video game music from another dimension.\u00a0A three-quarters developed game whose greatest beauty would be the bugs.\u00a0It’s exotic but strangely enchanting, and we don’t complain about staying there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would say that even if the sound in the strict sense doesn’t always match, the spirit of the album is definitely ambient.\u00a0The different pieces aim to put us in this contemplative state as if passing through time.\u00a0As much with the softer tracks as with the pounding ones, the objective is achieved: as the album progresses, we feel transported into a space with fuzzy details, with disintegrated corners, as if we were in a virtual reconstruction of Johnstown which disintegrates a little more over our steps.\u00a0A ghost town in a computer, with no wind;\u00a0remnants of unoriginated sounds;\u00a0rays of light without heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a single idea, an image, and an ability to handle sound, Nondi_ tells this story of which we only know the end.\u00a0We feel the old voices trying to come to the surface, but they are too far away for us to reach out to them.\u00a0It’s helplessness in the face of time, the disturbing feeling of no longer remembering the face of an old acquaintance.\u00a0Despite everything, by mixing Johnstown and electronic music;\u00a0historical tragedy, and web phenomena, we are perhaps trying to prove the impossible, to make music a defibrillator.\u00a0Perhaps, on the contrary, it is only a last look, immortalization on the contrary.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short,\u00a0Flood City Trax seems to play even louder in our heads when we stop it.\u00a0Failing to be able to find the lost past, the album finally surprises by making memory its home.\u00a0It’s completely successful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n