The Gauze Eyed Gaze of Bracketed Air by Collin Thomas is an avant-garde, immersive study of sound-challenging accepted music structures. Published on September 16, 2023, this massive project is a remarkable effort within the experimental genre integrating elements of drone, glitch, soundscape, modern instrumental, cinematic, and ambient music. Comprising sixteen parts, each at sixteen minutes, the album stands at a whopping four hours long, this enables listeners to interact with the reality of dementia.
The record is a study in contrast: calm and at once contemplative and bewildering. Among his inspirations, Thomas mostly relies on Morton Feldman, John Cage, Alva Noto, Ryuchi Sakamoto, and Taylor Deupree. The album’s understated style, in which silence and sound coexist to create a place as much about what is heard as it is about what is left unsaid, clearly shows these influences. Drone and glitch components help to create a soundscape that both Cage’s acceptance of chance and unpredictability and Feldman’s calm tension. It seems both natural and unearthly.
The monotonous and cyclical character of dementia, a topic important to the album’s concept, is evoked in the sluggish progression and repeated patterns of the music. Thomas reflects on the unsettling experience of memory loss and the emotional upheaval the patient and carer go through by embracing repetitions. Often lulling the listener into a false feeling of serenity before delivering surprising changes, the songs reflect the randomness and unpredictability of the condition via purposeful pace.
Thomas handles every aspect of the album’s production. Layers of electronic textures, field recordings, and processed acoustic instruments—all part of the auditory palette—produce a rich but clear sound. The simple instrumentation lets every sound ring completely within the mix, therefore generating a feeling of space and depth that is both alienating and reassuring. Thomas’s use of glitch effects simulates the fractured quality of memory and perception in dementia sufferers, therefore adding an element of unpredictability.
Though its range beyond simple description, the Gauze Eyed Gaze of Bracketed Air belongs in the avant-garde and experimental music genres. This conceptual piece explores the great psychological and emotional effects of dementia through the use of music. The theme of the album reflects the demanding and often tedious experience of caring for someone with this disease utilizing its length and repeating nature.
Though the album is clearly Thomas’s own creative work, one can see parallels in the works of Brian Eno, especially his ambient classics Music for Airports, as well as the glitch-infused compositions of Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s joint efforts. Using ambient music as a means of meditation, Thomas, like Eno, is more focused on the space between sounds than on the notes themselves. Thomas stretches this idea into the abstract, however, producing a soundscape that questions the listener’s sense of memory and time.
The Gauze Eyed Gaze of Bracketed Air is not meant to be an easy listen. It invites the listener to experience the music as a metaphor for the unrelenting grasp of dementia, therefore requiring patience and thought. The album asks us to face the difficult facts of aging and memory loss via the prism of experimental music, therefore serving as both an homage and a challenge. Thomas’s music is a hauntingly beautiful investigation of a tough topic, conveyed in sound as fragile and fleeting as the memories it aims to depict, for those ready to travel this road.