I was originally planning a Triple Feature for today, but there’s something about this new Derrick Stembridge album that is drawing out more words than I expected. The album is called Fading Into What Remains, and it was released on January 24th through Labile Records.
Derrick is the founder of Labile Records, and you may remember some of my reviews for his past works, such as Past Present Future: Archive I in 2023, or albums under his Drifting in Silence project, such as 2023’s Timeless or 2024’s Winter’s Past. He is quite prolific in his release schedule, as you can tell.
I think Fading Into What Remains might be his best work to date. It is ambient electronic music, but it maintains such a potent balance between ambience and energetic electronic rhythms. It is music that not only calms your spirit, but makes you feel something, though it also hovers with mystery and mist. It revels in the quietness of your mind.
The album explores transformation in some haunting ways. Derrick combines a sense of technology and cutting-edge discovery with ancient wisdom and the perpetual rhythm of life and beauty and emotion that lies beneath every global change, every social tumult, every menacing horizon. It is subtle, this theme, but you can feel it inside you; you can feel the uneasy tension, but also the warm acceptance of what may be. It is the song of evolution that represents both startling newness and primal heritage.
The record has a beautiful way about it from the very beginning. “Automated Dreams” is a hazy, filtered piece with Blade Runner atmosphere in its veins, and “Awakening in Fragments” feels like a continuation of that. Then comes the part of the record that forced me to write a full review: “Memories Left Behind” and “Algorithm of the Soul”. These tracks are daring and gorgeous. The former feels hollowed-out and filled with light, like experiencing fragments of the past with tiny visions of the future. It has a hypnotic glow. “Algorithm of the Soul” is my favorite, though, with its vivid electronic beat that slowly adds layer after layer of melody; I love how it flirts with both subtlety and clarity, injecting the album with intrigue. I could listen to this song for hours and hours, and every new listen seems to reveal a new layer.
Things get sticky right here because Bandcamp has a track called “Endless Cycle of Puzzled Patterns”, which combines a subtle dance beat with waves of vocals and a persistence melody as the backdrop. It’s wonderful. This track is not on streaming services. Now, I love how “Through the Static Veil” feels exactly like its name implies; it feels wondrous and transitional. It is like a transition to the second half of the record, which tends to more ambient in tone. “Forty Five” begins this trend, but not in the way you’d think. No, this track is quite dark and some of the textures are rougher and have some edge. There is a sense of shadow and movement and pale light. This leads into the title track itself, which I love; this piece has a classic ambient sound that is soon truncated with electronic triggers and fragments of a Blade Runner blues dream.
The final three tracks belong together. Things get a little sticky here again, though. On Bandcamp, “Silent Running” appears next, and it is a drifting piece with distant metallic echoes, and it is incredibly beautiful. On streaming services, this track is absent. Next comes a favorite called “Shape of Infinity”, a truly ambient piece which still feels like it swirls with fog, faraway pipes call to us, and shadowy melodies break through the veil. The album ends with “Full Circle”, a continuation of the previous track’s sound, but one that seems to glow with more intensity as the record closes.
Derrick Stembridge is becoming one of my favorite electronic artists. His music is meaningful and potent, and the layers he creates are often breathtaking. This is music that will sweep you away, or that will perhaps soak your spirit in serenity and peace. And that’s something very special for the age in which we live.
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Find Derrick Stembridge online:
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