We walk through the reality of a present that has just been robbed of its life. The swing is still creaking in the playground; the roundabout is still turning a little. Somewhere, washing is hanging out to dry, but there is no one there to take it in. A few windows are open, the door is just ajar, as if someone had only just left the house. Yet wherever you look: no one. It is a Kafkaesque silence that, rather than turning to fear, slowly transforms into melancholy.
These and other images come to mind as you work your way through Esse Pi Enne’s Industrial Relations. It is the past of a future, the promise of a futurism that never came to pass. Waking up to something industrial that has long since been stripped bare of its dream. Frayed drums, off-kilter guitars and sleepy loops reinforce this feeling, whilst unexpectedly tender moments keep breaking through in between. The thirteen tracks thus become a testament to a past present that never existed, yet feels familiar, as if from an almost forgotten dream. What remains is a metallic sense of weightlessness and a longing for something alive in a hollowed-out world.
