Jeremiah Chiu is a musician who thrives with a limitation. His work to date has been evocative but focused, be it creating a musical document of his time in the Åland Islands with friend Marta Sofia Honer or going for a “first idea, best idea” approach during a two day stint at the Vintage Synthesizer Museum. He’s not afraid to colour outside the lines, but his synthesizer experimentations and explorations are done so with a certain care that never feels overwrought; his music is often full of academic details and references, but its best quality is the ease at which one can just swim along with Chiu on his journey through his own world.
His new album and second solo work, Edge Conditions, finds Chiu working with similar limitations, albeit with more self-imposed boundaries and structures than before. It’s not often easy to tell where these confines are, but that makes it no less intriguing to absorb and sit in. Chiu named the album after the architectural term that refers to the “boundaries, interfaces, or transition zones between two different areas, materials, or states, often acting as a unique, occupiable, or functional space.”
It fits his style, a kind of music that isn’t afraid to wiggle outwards and in unexpected directions. He’s a musician with non-linear focus, creating environments and exploring the full surroundings and not letting traditional structures or musical patterns hold him down. That he made a special postcard that folds into a 3D rendering of his synth rig speaks to how he wants his music to be interacted and engaged with. (Each postcard also featured a link to MIDI files for a track from the album, encouraging others to download and create their own version of the music.)
Familiar sounds and landscapes of noise crop up every so often thanks to guest spots from friends. Aforementioned violist Marta Sofia Honer appears on “A Floral Pattern” and “Sentimental Object” adding a tranquil air. SML bandmate Booker Stardrum drops in some playful percussion on the unassuming centrepiece “Plastic Mind / Elastic Machines”. And on the album’s title track Marquis Hill’s trumpet and Patrick Shiroishi’s saxophone build to a squall before it returns to a monastic ambient calm. Like the many influences Chiu draws from with his music, he draws from his peers to eke out interesting and, at times, fascinating textures. Nothing is static in Chiu’s world, and even repetition isn’t a guaranteed anchor as part of the listening experience.
At the centre of the album are Chiu’s synths, which provide the most intriguing quality to the music. Sometimes it sounds like a clunky and huge supercomputer from an old sci-fi movie making huge calculations and/or going haywire (see the slew of different retro electronica grooves and jazzy squiggles on “A.M. Fuses”); sometimes it leans into being an acid techno dance-like workout (“Night Fog”); and sometimes it’s even dramatic and mournful (the string-laden “Sentimental Object”, which pairs Honer’s human quality against Chiu’s fidgety and frustrated computational noises). “In Visibility” even taps into a similar ethereal like calm as Sufjan Steven’s early electronic venture, Enjoy Your Rabbit.
Edge Conditions finds new and engaging paths for Chiu to venture down, all thanks to the limitations and boundaries he set himself. With full freedom, the mind races at the possibilities ahead of him, but for now his own confines prove plenty rewarding.
