Premiere: Absolute Fantasy’s atmospheric “Cavern Us”

Arts

Feb 25

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Absolute Fantasy is perhaps the most appropriate moniker for the ambient energy stirred by LA-based creator Math Erao. Kaleidoscopic in nature, dipping from serenity to dissociation and back again, Math’s compositions are washed in a mist neither future nor past. The electro endeavour is a dreamy ascension itself, a wandering trail of far-away melodies and fog. Since 2016, the artist mentally bookmarked bytes of sound and, through what is best described as “a new musical palette”, realized an upcoming release, coincidentally, while processing personal relationships with the spaces she has inhabited, both in physical migration and gender + sexuality.

What emerged is the sonic exploration of Healing & Dealing and “Cavern Us” is a glimpse. With waves that quietly crescendo from an ethereal gauze to an almost furied pace, “Cavern” is a complex soundscape emergently emotive from Fantasy’s previous work. Initially half-realized songs unified to reflect a past connection to Central Florida and current submerge of self in Southern California. Befittingly, Healing & Dealing is presented by DIY label + artisan shop, Never Content, a collective curated by Noah Klein, and home to many West Coast underground wonders.

<a href="https://becomecontent.bandcamp.com/album/healing-dealing">healing &amp; dealing by absolute fantasy</a>

The actualization of Healing & Dealing represents a second wave of discovery for Math, “one that found me more confident in my personal and artistic life”, a sentiment felt in the underlying boldness and balance of the 5-song collection. Furthermore, the Absolute Fantasy moniker is just one of Math’s multifaceted outlets and the past year has been an exercise in utilizing creative assets to assist where greater urgency arised. In specific, the LAPD’s notorious history of police brutality found the region ripe for conversation by and for the abolitionist community during 2020.

“My friend Zevvy Smith-Danford started In This Together LA right after George Floyd was murdered and protests started popping up all over Los Angeles. She wanted to compile everything happening across the city to make it easier for people to find things to attend,” Math explains, emphasizing that they are compilers as opposed to organizers. “Right after she started, I made her a logo and then my partner, Alisha Erao, and I began helping behind-the-scenes along with a couple of others as the page grew and started getting more and more messages.” Today, In This Together is made of a small team which vets events, plans raffles, creates educational content, and curates music compilations. Zevvy and Math both split duties of daily lists and design work. “We try to use our platform to do further good within the movement.”

Math’s own personal soak of the socio-political is intertwined. As a genderqueer trans woman, the promotion of leftist ideas, to the best of her knowledge and ability, reflect back and intersect with a greater understanding of the importance in freedom, whether it be in identity or expression, and the stark restriction of arcane systems and limitations that tend to impose wounds of their own. Whatever form of art they touch, tomes of thought through writing, the colours of a sun-glown sky photographed while passing through the States, or creating the gradient lush of her recognizable graphic design work, personal or political, each stands solidly and sincere. Healing & Dealing is more than a calm oasis that immediately sweeps the listener into a different attunement of sensory acuteness; it moves, like wind, a journey in itself.

Healing & Dealing will be available as a limited edition CD of 50 copies with accompanying photos, pre-order available today via Bandcamp. The album will be digitally released on March 11th, 2021 on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, etc.

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Sunni Johnson is the Arts Editor of WUSSY and a writer, zinester, and musician based in Atlanta, GA.

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