Geneva Skeen’s new record is aptly titled Double Bind. Not only the last track on the record with the same title is really a double bind, but double bind is the concept behind the whole album. It is an ambient album, but you will not be able to lean back and enjoy the beautiful sonic landscapes enfolding before your ears. Not that the music on Double Bind was not full of beauty, but this beauty is at the same time dark and even more significantly has an unnerving and even frightening effect. This music is demanding because it is emotionally very deep. The emotional deepness and the musical profoundness of all tracks of the record are forcing the listener to focus on the musical content of the tracks and to follow the musical events closely as if the tracks were narratives. But are they narratives? Aren’t they much more atmospheres? Double bind.

Poet Aristilde Kirby writes in her liner notes: “If you ask me, Geneva is a poet who works in sound sculpture.” If you ask me, this is exactly true. Not only are the tracks on this record poems in sound, but the sound is progressively sculpted in the course of each track, which may be also one reason for the amount of focus the music demands from the listener.

In many respects Double Bind is similar to my record of the year 2019: Liz Harris’ aka Nivhek’s After its own death / Walking in a spiral towards the house. I used to come back to this album regularly and it never fails to engage me profoundly. I’m sure Geneva Skeens new record will do the same with me throughout next year.

Double Bind is one of the most profound musical statements of 2020 and for me it is the record of the year so far – but the year will end in one and a half months, so what are the chances for another album to be published that is even better than Geneva Skeen’s?

Double Bind by Geneva Skeen was released on Lawrence English’s Room40 label on November 13, 2020.