Your playlist for these times of uncertainty
It was Zbigniew Brzezinski who, in his most incendiary statements in the now (in-)famous The Grand Chessboard, suggested that the projected New World Order, fragmenting into an abyssal sea of interconnected ideologies and vociferously antagonistic frameworks, could - and to put it somewhat dryly - propose an era of profound geographical, cultural, and psychological disintegration. Minds strain under the relentless pressures of politically partisan rhetoric, hearts calcify in a coldly paranoiac paradigm of military-industrial-come-infrastructural indifference, and we are left numbed and dulled by the ceaseless bombardment of ideological validation, all spun out and excessively proliferated in the age of seeming unlimited information to boot. Or at least, something to this effect - I could very well be projecting just a tad; although, despite my voracious consumption of political philosophy between 2016 and 2020, my precise recollection of most such reading material is now irritatingly muddled.
Regardless, one might argue - especially from the perhaps fittingly autumnal vantage of 2024 - that Brzezinski's overall prophecy is being borne out in full.
But without potentially resorting to puerile rabble-rousing, your author might wish to briefly consider the desperate antics of ideologically motivated factions characteristic of both social and legacy media rage-baiting, or the closed-loop conspiracies that masquerade as “awakened” collective-conscious progressivism diametrically entwined with hard-line, “based” superimpositions, each no less dashed with a sprinkling of frantic (and often downright febrile) political "solutions" whose vapid superficiality can make the psyche of the wanton independent ache like a broken clock stuck on repeat. As indeed, it’s as though we’ve moved from an era of (upper-case-R) Reason to a charnel house of fifteen-second streams of primal scream hypnosis therapy, each lost in their own echo chamber of a poor man’s friend-enemy dichotomy (no, certainly not that of the intellectually rigorous and theoretically sound Schmittian variation).
Put succinctly, if Brzezinski’s vision were a simple land map, it would show the way to nowhere, but disillusionment disguised as principle - a thought cycle as tight as a Salem noose, drawn by the perpetual churn of ideological life. So, welcome to postmodernism.
Of course, this is little more than a rhetorical gambit. It’s fashionably hypocritical to rage against the machine only to participate in it moments later. This ‘New World Order’ of a distinct accelerationist orientation, despite its myriad perceivable faults, does have its merits - particularly if one’s goal is the consolidation of power or, if you must, the pursuit of fleeting ideological victories. But therein lies the rub: what begins as a convenient tool, a quick fix for instantaneous connectivity, soon becomes a reliably nauseating brew of artificial validation and rampant existential languishing. The experience is tantamount to substituting processed food for a full meal: yes, you are technically "nourished," but at what cost to your Being? To your Spirit? We are fed, yes - but not by the things that sustain us on a holistic level. Conversely, we gorge on scraps that rot our sense of self, offering only the briefest, most ephemeral of satisfactions. Another way of phrasing this would be: is society utterly lost?
In any case, the need for sanctuary has never been greater - an oasis where the individual can reclaim a measure of sovereignty, however small, in a world otherwise swallowed by external forces. One thing is certain in uncertain times: that which cannot be changed warrants the highest degree of investment.
And what of it all? What of the crumbling edifice of this seeming global purgatory? I find myself consistently drawn to a domain resolutely untethered from this calcifying grip of external contagion - something that resists the suffocating flatness of contemporary discourse: the art of sound. These are not mere compositions, nor are they dilettantish exercises in aesthetic indulgence. No, they are sovereign articulations of an inner universe, forged against the relentless cacophony of cultural entropy and expressed via an otherwise linguistically incommunicable Story with a capital S. In their purest instantiation, the perennial crafting of sound design has always served the naturally creative individual as not only a means of self-actualisation but also as an act of defiance and in contemporary cultural discourse if nothing else, a refusal to submit to the politically charged algorithmic reduction of authentic expression. Perhaps more pertinently in this context, serving as a reclamation of a stoical will to forge intrinsic meaning in the face of all-too-apparent worldwide ugliness.
Suppose I've successfully conveyed Brzezinski’s vision of the geopolitical chessboard as having culminated into an accelerating vortex of feedback loops and digital hysteria. In that case, the process of contextual, melodic, and ultimately story-driven sound design cultivated by today’s foremost pioneers of sonic storytelling emerges as a counter-movement by virtue of its reaction to the liminal space of chaos out of order - pockets of stillness, where one might pause and, for a moment, experience the sublime weight of the unspoken. Here, the artist is not a hapless participant in the ideological treadmill but a cartographer of sonic terrains, constructing sanctuaries that defy categorisation. These works are not mere responses to the external world; they are irruptions of sovereignty, microcosmic worlds bound only by the unrelenting pursuit of the artist’s inner coherence.
The soundscape artist, in their purest form, is an alchemist of affect. Every reverberation, each oscillation, acts as a means of transmuting the chaos of the external world into an ordered, profoundly personal experience - a quiet act of transcendence. As Brian Eno once envisioned, the soundscape is not merely something to be heard but to be inhabited. It offers a liminal space where the listener steps beyond the role of passive consumer and becomes an active interpreter, engaging in the delicate art of meaning-making. It is an antidote to the flattening forces of the cultural zeitgeist, transforming dissonance into rhythm and noise into purpose. Far from an act of escapism, these sonic sanctuaries embody a quiet resistance - a reclamation of sovereignty in a world saturated with ideological currents and relentless noise. In this context, referring to artistic expression as 'soundscapist' may seem perplexing at first, yet it is this very trait that anchors the electronic avant-garde in profound relevance. The solitary nature of contemporary music crafting mirrors the post-COVID zeitgeist, where pervasive digital (and, by extension, social) isolation and a stark absence of authentic human connection have become embedded in our culture. Through the withdrawn realms of electronic music, soundscapers delve deeply into the emotional detachment and seclusion that have silently shaped our increasingly digitised existence.
This playlist is not merely a curated assemblage of tracks but a guide to inner sovereignty, a call for listeners to rediscover their sense of self through sound. With pioneers such as Biosphere, whose minimalist layers evoke the slow, undulating drift of the subconscious, Karen Vogt, whose ethereal textures dissolve the rigid boundaries of perception, and Rafael Anton Irisarri, whose lush, brooding soundscapes explore the tension between melancholy and grandeur, each composition provides pockets of stillness amidst the turbulence. The Lonely Bell infuses a cinematic gravitas, transforming desolation into beauty. Collectively, these works do more than soothe; they create sanctuaries of transcendence, where chaos is subtly shaped into coherence, and the listener is reminded that, even amidst disarray, rhythm and resilience endure in these decisively uncertain times.
Cover photo: Karen Vogt by Steve Wheeler