Benjamin Louis Brody and Ian Chang Present FLOATING INTO INFINITY Album Review — Sensory Soundscape

Posted on by Abby Utley

Benjamin Louis Brody and Ian Chang Create Percussion Puzzles

Tune in, zone out, and sink into your chair. Let the sound reverberations trickle down your spine. Allow the digitally designed percussion to coat your body and flow reverently around your senses. Acoustic tones will pulsate and linger. If you close your eyes, you may convince yourself that you are actually seeing, feeling, and even tasting the texture of the audio. The stimulating sonic frequencies that seem to come from behind, beside, and above your body act as the path on which your subconscious can step through. You may find it easier to enter another frequency of thought patterns. Or you may feel comfortable to access a state of almost no thought at all. These instrumentals have the meditative properties to connect your mind and body, and from this point on, the listening experience becomes unique to you. 

Floating Into Infinity, a project by New York City composer Benjamin Louis Brody and drummer Ian Chang, is a gentle attack on the senses. New Amsterdam Records says that Brody is known for “creating beautiful walls of sound with ambient texture,” and Chang is comfortable composing percussive sound design. They take the soothing nature of raw harmonies and use them as puzzle pieces to form an intensely looming essence that begs listeners to apply their own definition. 

For example, this reviewer imagines that if you press play on the fifth track ASMR II, you’d first get hit with visions of mythical elves tap dancing with clogs on a wooden surface. As they click and clack, a low-pitched reverberation lightly strikes. Perhaps this deep chime is the elven king banging his humming drum. The vibrations continue to raise — Dum, doom, dum — and interact with the higher-pitched clickity clacks, and finally a warm array of techno ringing becomes the most prominent sound. These tolls lead the song to a close, as if it were the lunch bells calling the elves to drop their instruments and come dine. 

Benjamin Louis Brody and Ian Chang Challenge the Boundaries of Instrumental Composition to Form An Effective Soundscape

You may find that this record is rather mournful, or uplifting, or even ominous. The final product is vague in nature to allow for an individualized listening experience. There are gaps in meaning, left by the lack of lyrics, which allow for listeners to fill in this space with themselves. In other words, the instruments only take up so much space, which may invite you to pull up a seat beside them, rather than simply watch from afar. 

Not everyone meditates, nor do they find it easy to listen to music without vocals. In that case, Brody and Chang’s album is not the right fit. But for you folks whose hours are organized by your to-do lists, you might find Floating Into Infinity to be healing. Listening can be a profound break from your day-to-day, so that you can proceed with a more refreshed thinking cap. 

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MUSICIANS 

Benjamin Louis Brody

Ian Chang

For more information on how to listen to the album, visit Floating Into Infinity

Photos courtesy of New Amsterdam Records

 

Abby Utley

About the Author: Abby Utley

Abby Utley writes as a method of truth-seeking. Getting to the bottom of things is her prerogative, and so is keeping her music playlists fresh. Although she puts originality at the forefront of her written pieces, she finds the most inspiration after immersing herself in other art forms. When she's not writing, you may find her at the rock climbing gym, where she may take a break thirty minutes into her workout to write a satirical article. Finding humor where one may not expect is another one of Abby's prerogatives that allows her to think out of that stingy ole box that so many adults find themselves trapped in. She thinks tapping back into a childlike imagination is something all writers should work towards.

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