Album Review: Deserta - 'Black Aura My Sun'

Is there anything as tumultuous to your life as finding out that you’re going to become a parent? That in nine short months you will have another entity to look after. An entity that is completely and utterly dependent on your existence. Deserta’s debut album ‘Black Aura My Sun’ is an otherworldly reaction to being put in that very same position.

Matthew Doty is no stranger to the world of music. Having spent almost 20 years being immersed in the realms of shoegaze and experimental sounds, it comes as no surprise that his natural reaction to life-changing news was to create an aural effigy for the purest form of life. ‘Black Aura My Sun’ feels quite remarkably like the embodiment of being wrapped up and cocooned in utero. With vocals that are barely decipherable and often masked by the wholly encompassing sound-bath, you often feel as though you are the fluid mist on the album cover.

‘Save Me’ and ‘Paradiso’ set the hazy and atmospheric tone which translates as an unwavering beam of light that shoots out and intensifies until the point of imploding and softening into a wisp. There is a fogginess that smothers the whole EP in a way that you cannot quite grasp, or define. It almost transcends the physical realm. One in which Sigur Rós and Cocteau Twins meet in the ether and float down to earth encased in the exoskeleton of Deserta.

Each song has a moment where it holds time still in the palm of its hands, creating a seamlessness between the transitions, whether it be the blistering guitar riffs in ‘Monica’ or the dissonant and almost out of tune riffs in ‘I’ll Be Gone’. All of this climaxes in the breathtaking ‘Black Aura’ which almost sounds as though it is the moment of inception. A fluttering anticipation is built by a quick succession of layered strings before melting away, back into the warm embrace of that aforementioned cocoon.

Words by Tyler Damara Kelly

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