All Day Sun Aura

Some collaborations announce themselves immediately. Others take years to find the circumstances in which they can fully emerge. Guitarist Álvaro Domene and drummer Scott Amendola first crossed paths in Berkeley, California, in 2019, introduced by guitarist Henry Kaiser for an evening of solo performances culminating in a trio improvisation. The chemistry was immediate. What might have become a series of performances and a studio recording was instead interrupted by a world that suddenly fell silent. Yet rather than disappearing, the collaboration evolved. Separated by geography but united in creative ambition, Domene and Amendola began exchanging recordings remotely, building the music through a sustained process of composition, improvisation and reinterpretation. The ensuing conversation is remarkable for the absence of hierarchy. Throughout the record, Domene's singular guitar language—equally indebted to contemporary composition, free improvisation and metal—finds an ideal counterpart in Amendola, whose drumming is less concerned with marking time than with constantly reshaping it. Electronics emerge not as ornament but as a further extension of the dialogue, expanding the sonic landscape without obscuring its essential humanity. The album opens with Taenia Segment II, where heavily distorted guitar lines chomp hard against a brutalist barrage of broken drums. The music feels simultaneously architectural and unstable: structures appear to fracture under their own weight before reassembling in unexpected forms. The Fugitive Instant shifts the energy. A playful rhythmic exchange darts between the musicians with a restless, mischievous quality reminiscent of The Flying Luttenbachers, before plunging into a desolate, cavernous misery. Scratch The Void serves as a tribute to Lee "Scratch" Perry, who died shortly before Amendola recorded his contribution to what was then an untitled piece. The dedication feels apt in music so attuned to space and texture. Glitch electronics and syncopated drums give way to a dissonant, mesmerizing lullaby. The musicians seem to pull against one another, generating tension while retaining an eery fragility. Puerta al Sur delicately circles a melodic motif before cascading into a glistening, glacial landscape. The theme later re-emerges in altered form against harsh metallic scrapes, while bending guitar notes washed in reverb and delay accumulate into an ethereal wall of sound. The piece builds towards restrained climax before dissipating into a haunting void of heavily processed digital noise. Puerta was first composed by Domene nearly twenty years ago, lending its reappearance here a particular resonance. The album’s final piece, Taenia Segment VI, unfolds in two sharply contrasting sections. The first is spacious and sparse, built largely around clean guitar and drums, with an intimacy in the interplay that brings to mind Bill Evans and Paul Motian. Then it catapults into a frantic, fast-moving angular groove, its linear momentum recalling the energy of Tim Berne’s Bloodcount. That abrupt shift perhaps best captures one of the record’s defining qualities: its refusal to remain in a single emotional register. Playfulness gives way to unease; tightly coiled passages open suddenly into vast spaces. At its heaviest the music can feel almost crushing, while elsewhere it seems simply to evaporate into beautiful nothingness. Yet these contrasts never feel imposed. They arise naturally from the musicians' willingness to let the material move wherever it needs to go. This is music that rewards repeated listening. With each return, new relationships reveal themselves—between melody and noise, structure and freedom, density and space. There are moments of beauty, menace, humour and sheer weight, sometimes within the same piece. Nothing remains settled for long. Like the musical relationship from which it emerged, All Day Sun Aura leaves the sense of a conversation still unfolding. — Michael Caratti credits