Right now, music that really overloads the senses is having a moment. Think that acclaimed Los Thuthanaka album from last year or the latest zayok track which — given your vantage point — are either brilliant exploded diagrams in multi-faceted genre explorations or something that makes your brain feel like you are on the brink of having an aneurism mid-way through. Maybe this is actually just the beginning of a strange new normal in what we should expect from sonic styles in a day and age where content over-stimulation and the attention-deficit economy has society by a death grip.

Manifold, the latest project from the Canadian experimental composer Sarah Bell Reid, runs tangent to that, but also like an observational commentary of it all. Described as “a sonic investigation into temporal perception and memory – tiny moments that seem to persist indefinitely, and precious encounters that degrade and slip away”, it’s a demanding 9-part sound sculpture parsed into a seamless, 45-minute-long listen recorded in quadrophonic sound. For non-audiophile nerds, that’s a a form of 4-channel audio technology invented in the ’70s that is uses to a 360° listening experience by using four independent speakers positioned in the corners of a room to create a wholly immersive experience. You can experience it in the flesh by booking an appointment to visit album producer Nick Sylvester’s newly opened art gallery in the Glassell Park neighborhood of L.A., which fittingly John Cage once called home (you’ll recognize it from the outside because its minimalist exterior literally looks like this website’s schematic turned into a stucco building, complete with lowercase left-adjusted Helvetica font.)

Reid’s primary instrument of the trumpet is fragmented somewhere within this ultra-glitched quarks and loop-spurting modular synth fissures encapsulate your neural connectors. Even by stereo standards, they can feel like they’re in a chronic state of recomposition and redesign the further you move throughout the listen. It’s mental cardio, and yet, Reid’s latest work operates with an intent to be just that in rearranging the patterns of the brain to consume more of everything, bringing into question the limitations of what humans can absorb, how we absorb it, and the role space might play in being able to digest it all completely.

Highlights: “Weave”, “Encapsulation II”, “Fissure”

Sarah Bell Reid’s Manifold is available now on smartdumb.

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