Despite bearing a name pertaining to the sense of touch, Haptic’s music has long hovered at the threshold of insubstantiality. This holds true for Ecliptic, whose release coincides with the trio achieving its 21st year together. Over time, participants Adam Sonderberg, Joseph Clayton Mills and Steven Hess have pared back the information that they share about their collaborations, so details of circumstance and instrumentation are open to supposition.
But knowing too much would probably just dilute the experience of engaging with this 43-minute expanse of exquisitely layered sound. While it works well as a low-volume complement to room sound, it rewards being actively listened to and pondered, preferably many times and under diverse conditions. Don’t get hung up on what’s in the foreground, because different perspectives will yield quite different auditory experiences. Attend to one detail, and others will provoke questions. Is that water or traffic fluctuating around those foregrounded tactile scrapes, which might have been teased from a drumskin? How many pianos are there in the mix, and how far was each from the microphones used to record it? Are those synthesizers or crickets making that chirping sound, and were they ever at risk of being dampened by the subaquatic clatter that bobs around some popping contact microphones?
Take Ecliptic with you on a train, and its remote gestures will subtly color what you see out the window. Play it with your eyes closed, and a world will expand within your mind like some weather system that is simultaneously diffusing and rushing toward your cranial peripheries. The more you play it, the more music you will find lurking beyond its placid initial presentation. [Granny]
—Bill Meyer
