‘And what more could I possibly ask, as an artist, than that your most precious visions, however rare, assume sometimes the forms of my images’ (Maya Deren, Film Culture, 1961)

The Kyiv born, New York raised short filmmaker, Maya Deren, who died suddenly in 1961, has been a long-term inspiration for Optic Sink’s Natalie Hoffman.  Deren’s film making was interested in creating a poetic aura above all else.  It is very mannered – with every frame and every edit intentional – relying on body movement, slow motion, and jump cuts to create a hypnotic, dream-like sequencing.  Film as choreography.  So, an invitation to create scores to four of Deren’s most renowned films was one that the band could not turn down.

The appeal of partnering Deren’s films with new compositions is obvious.  Yet it is not without its challenges.  An original score has but one motivation – to reflect and amplify the emotion of the film.  When reimagining a score as Optic Sink are, you must not only achieve this but also create an album that has its own clear identity.  And this is a balance that the Memphis band strike with an inventive assurance.

Relentless Metamorphosis is also undeniably an Optic Sink album.  The deadpan vocals are necessarily eschewed.  However, the other defining elements are brought to bear with a typically beguiling precision.  Crystalline guitar and coldly pulsing synths are underpinned by crisp percussion.  The compositions are notably spacious, each individual instrument given room to breathe, and then hypnotically layered and immersively reworked into new shapes.

Each of the four tracks deftly interplays with its film counterpart.  There is an intriguing reciprocity at play as each informs and colours the other.  Yet, equally importantly, every track stands very much on its own two feet.  The Very Eye Of Night languorously unfurls with a shimmering, enticing ambivalence, whereas A Study In Choreography For Camera assertively throbs with disco fuelled synths and Afro-Cuban rhythms.  In stark contrast, Meshes Of The Afternoon glowers with a dissonant, cosmically shrouded sense of dread, before Meditation On Violence languidly coils, a haunting refrain across the shattered remains of an arid battlefield.  A Relentless Metamorphosis in both spirit and execution.