“The idea of ‘masking’—the process of learning certain behaviors to conform to the pressures of seeming ‘normal’—made him realize that he had been hiding his struggles rather than expressing them.”
Following EMPATHY—one of the Bay Area’s best ambient albums of 2021—SF artist Joel St. Julien returns with Masking, a new full-length work released on Yann Novak’s LA-based imprint Dragon’s Eye Recordings. Nearly half the length of its predecessor, the new work sees St. Julien intermingling slow and beatless sonic tapestries, thumping ambient techno twittering (“Secrets Come Out”), and hazy downtempo IDM (“Float”). While it seems likely that tracks like “Masking” and “Collected Breath” intentionally allude to the pandemic, for St. Julien the overall theme of the album is highly personal, investigating his neurodivergence in a world where we’re so often encouraged (both directly and indirectly) to seek acceptance by taking on other forms. Another fantastic entry from the Haitian-American composer and producer.
