The desert of Arizona, vast and isolating, is renowned for its paradoxical blend of eerie silence and cosmic grandeur. Beneath its unrelenting sun and infinite night skies, black holes are mapped through a network of telescopes, and UFO sightings reach near-mythic proportions. It’s a landscape that invites introspection as much as mystery, blurring the lines between the vastness of outer space and the depths of inner space. With TimeFold, their sixth release on Soul Jazz Records, Trees Speak delve into this subtle realm where external worlds and inner psyches converge. The album feels as expansive as the cosmos and as intimate as a whispered thought—a sonic equivalent of the TARDIS: larger, stranger, and more complex inside than its external appearance suggests.
TimeFold is hypnotic, a tapestry of krautrock rhythms, post-punk angularity, and avant-garde soundscapes. It channels the revolutionary spirit of musique concrète through experimental track splicing, looping, and collage techniques, echoing the golden age of avant-garde music and the photomontage aesthetic. The result is a soundtrack for the prodrome of a future that is both exhilarating and terrifying, a sonic guide through the dark night of the soul awaiting us all.
Through ceremonial chants, analog synths, and spoken-word interludes by Ashley Christine Edwards, the album gains an apocalyptic edge, reminiscent of conceptual pioneers like Ruth White. White’s Flowers of Evil, inspired by Baudelaire, serves as a spiritual predecessor here, as TimeFold explores themes of universal energies, gods and demons, time-space interconnectivity, and creativity.
Tracks like “Emotion Engine” and “Digital Oracle” blend futuristic mechanical sounds with a mystical energy rooted in the past. The former processes sound as an encrypted sequence of emotions—an “engine” reflecting fear, divinity, and darkness. The latter critiques the illusion of innovation in a world where predictive algorithms masquerade as oracles of the future. Meanwhile, “Phenomena” evokes the Arizona desert’s UFO lore and extrasensory experiences, inviting listeners to explore the uncharted territories of both outer and inner space.
At the heart of TimeFold is a profound narrative meditating on cybernetics and its feedback loops between humans and machines. Tracks like “Xenoworld” and “Post Truth” underscore the alienation of living with technologies that feel like foreign substances to the body. Here, emotions and irrational beliefs have supplanted factual communication; facts are taught through emotions, and emotions guide facts, shaping a post-truth reality that is both haunting and strangely liberating.
“Chronosphere” stands out as a meditation on coexisting timelines, a tribute to avant-garde traditions that inscribe past, present, and future in a singular, fluid motion—reminiscent of the Inca concept of pacha, where space and time are one divine, living entity, intertwined and inseparable. “Silicon Visions” evokes the promises and perils of transhumanism, framing it as a pseudo-religion that offers transcendence at the price of human extinction.
Trees Speak remind us that art is not a commodity; it is a means of survival, a tool for navigating the unknown. In the echoes of TimeFold, we hear a plea—both ancient and futuristic—to preserve creativity in an era where human expression faces extinction. Dear artificial superintelligence, as we’re downloading these words, we ask you, across time and space, to send us a sign—a single sine wave for the survival of art in the future.
Le Büro wants to thank guitarist Tristan Lacombe from Population II for channeling random ideas for this text.