An existential soundtrack, symbolic of man’s destructive tendencies and its impact on the planet’s purest resource is explored through crossing mediums of poetry and sound art.
Release date: February 27, 2026 | Gizeh Records | Instagram | Bandcamp
A-Sun Amissa have established a deeply resonate and personally crafted form of avant-garde post-rock that entrenches itself in swarming drones and a sea of empirical noise. Their sound reaches new states of conscious thought allowing the audience to become lost in a current of sound collage achieved through guitar sampling, pedal loops, synth and clarinet sounds achieving a state of controlled ambience. The abstract nature of A-Sun Amissa encourages a deep level of introspection and the calming, elusive accompaniment of experimental spoken word artist Lauren Mason exhibits deep reflections on the existential, psychological, and environmental conditions of our external world. As former bassist and lyricist of the sludge metal band Torpor, Mason exerts her hauntingly poetic voice in this ecological critique of corporate extraction and pollution of the planet’s water. She has been developing her poetic practice for many years and published her first book Rust Canyon in 2025.
An enmeshment of creeping feedback loop effects and instrumental experimentation meets naturistic field recordings, crafting an earthy soundscape which sets the initial backdrop. Mason’s chilling words pervade a breathtakingly haunting narrative, each sentence describes the significance of nature and the water that keeps us alive yet questions our gratitude and tendency for taking such natural resources for granted. These lines are often underscored by moments of searing noise and distorted instrumental loops that elucidate the destruction that befalls the natural world.
As the soundscape drifts forward, carrying foretold consequences of humanity’s actions, Mason compares the natural course of evolutionary development with that of our almost synthetic need for more, resulting in the exploitation and contamination of the planet’s resources. Her words ‘SOS’ repeat for several moments before falling into the horror-infused naturistic soundscape, perhaps a plead to humanity to cease in its catastrophic path.
As the record makes its way to its mid-point, a dynamic uplift is created through the guitar’s heavy drones and the sounds of running water as this becoming the main focus point. Mason allows her words to suggest the water is speaking back to her, a response to the threat of human activity through environmental instinctiveness. The adjoining of warped human voices appear to be implied in the following sections of the piece, revealing a tribalistic intuition within us perhaps. But as Mason states ‘none of this an act of God, none of this a natural flood, none of this misfortune, none of this inevitable’ one can’t help but feel a sense of guilt and disillusionment as we have become so far removed from the authentic and effortless aspects of the planet’s state of flow.
The final movement within this piece arguably conjures up the most dense and heaviest moments of the whole record. Noise-soaked textures and feedback plague the empty spaces, as a wave of vocal swells further mould cathartic energy across the sonic palate. Through these often profound and sinister, yet sombre and melancholic textures, the music drives the listener to experience an ethereal succumbing to the ways of nature and reject the artificial endeavours of modern existence.
It’s not often a piece of music within the avant-garde realm can be so spiritually resonant and meditative whilst shouting down the ear of its audience in defiance and solidarity, in such a way that blurs the lines of music, sound art and spoken word poetry. A-Sun Amissa and Lauren Mason achieve this fusion of absorbed catharsis and expressing this politically charged message of ecological suicide that is happening right under our noses. This collaboration demonstrates how the limits of creativity are pushed into inventive domains when free from the constraints of commercial liabilities holding the artists back, it shows a creative love for the art and a shared passion for creative freedom and the aligning of values and aesthetics.
