Ross Downes - Stacked Up At Zero - 1LP

Stacked Up At Zero is the new full length instrumental LP from London based artist / musician Ross Downes and is a carefully crafted record fluctuating between calm solace, foreboding tension and ambient longing. Fundamentally an electronic record, synthesisers create a darkly ethereal setting, evoking entranced contemplation that regularly gives way to more shadowy territories. From comforting to concerning, it captivates through an inventive combining of genres.

Stacked Up At Zero is an intensely intimate and personal record. A place that Downes built to occupy, wander and give voice during a difficult year. It’s a record of psychological landscapes, between truths that need comfort and fictions that give escape. The influence and love of cinema permeates the record. Downes builds a world, creating an environment influenced by soundtracks, potential narratives and a propensity for the dramatic.

Evocative sound design and field recordings provide atmospheres that accompany, place and shroud the melodic and compositional preoccupations of the record. The influences, from a multitude of approaches and styles, contribute to a dynamic collection of shifting densities that reference minimal, ambient, industrial and contemporary classical music.

Drones shift and fluctuate whilst a myriad of synthesisers propel, distort and drift. Expansive groaning bass frequencies lay ominous foundations for progressive lines, vast sci-fi pads, digital ticks, sampled strings, disembodied voices and sparse percussion immersed in cavernous echoing reverb.

Recent musical activities from Downes have included compositions for large European art installation projects. During 2019 he contributed a piece to Mischa Kabul’s long running installation Res-o-nant at the Jewish Museum, Berlin. In 2018 he composed a lengthy work for his collaboration, with Cologne based, artist Sebastian Freytag on an ambitious light/audio installation titled Sygnal for The Museum Slaskie, Poland. He has recently completed work on soundtracking Turner Prize winner Laure Prouvost's Sydney Bienalle exhibition which opens this Spring.