Album Review: Ben Chatwin’s Heat & Entropy Is A Dark, Oceanic FairyTale
Ben Chatwin’s Heat & Entropy is an eery fall into Pan’s Labyrinth, and I love it. It is music mysticism at its best as you feel like you have sonically opened a twisted fairytale. While some notes are warm and inviting others feel strange and curious. Hence, it is the perfect album for those that wish to have a journey into pure sound. Moreover, it is a grand homage to Chatwin’s inspiration: the ocean.
When you think of the deep blue sea it seem like the most stunning yet terrifying thing to envision. What lies there? Moreover, could you lie there, and live in such a dreamy, oceanic world? Chatwin experimented with sounds to create the wonder of Heat & Entropy and push his own creative limits. Throughout the album, you will admire the strange beauty of songs like Standing Waves, which Chatwin attached pieces of metal, rubber and tape to the piano strings in order to add a greater percussive sound. Who would even think of that? It is awe-inspiring the sonic effect but also the human one. The song like, each track on the record, sparks sentiments of perseverance and resilience. The heaviness of its instrumentals still carry a lightness in orchestration, and, like waves, transition from rough to smooth with a natural grace. Hence, Chatwin creates a dark fairytale of the sea, where the scariest and most exuberant creatures live, but you must decide which one are you?
What I love about Heat & Entropy is that from beginning to end it feels like a cinematic self-exploration. It is fascinating to see which sounds activate which sentiments. Chatwin’s synthetic frequencies, make the album feel like a nature CD of the future. On it you can hear ocean waves from Mars or forest winds from Jupiter. It is as if he has taken the sounds of all the picturesque beauty on earth given them an intergalactic feel. This allows your emotional response to him to feel bigger as if you are not just reacting to you , but yourself in the universe. Does that sound too deep or big? It should! Why not have such a musical experience? With the earth being a part of the universe, and Chitin’s Heat & Entropy reminds listeners’ of that through its vast eccentricity. I am a huge fan of film soundtracks, in part, because they feel like sonic guides into a mind. Moreover, if you are like me then you think that every mind can be its own universe. What Chatwin has done is tap into that idea. Heat & Entropy may be heard, but it is mostly seen and felt when it comes to experience. It is vivid in what it ignites inside its listeners: imagination.
There are no lyrics needed in Chatwin’s Heat & Entropy. Instead, emotion is purely pulsed through sounds, and each one carries a riveting effect. From the first song Inflexion, you think you have opened a door into a fantastical dimension. In this dimension, you might get hurt or healed depending on each instrumental Chatwin strikes. On one hand, you are confused by the crashing of sonic waves while also eager to figure out: Where does this all lead? Yet, like a musical episode of Lost, you find it all leads to you. You can buy Heat & Entropy, Ben Chatwin’s spiritual, cosmic experience of sound, here.
