ALBUM REVIEW: Water Scores – A-Sun Amissa & Lauren Mason
Experimental drone merchants A-SUN AMISSA join forces with poet LAUREN MASON to ask the question ‘What if water was keeping score?’
Water. Practically all life on earth depends on it. Our bodies are 60 per cent water. The human body can barely last more than a couple of days without it. Earth’s surface is over 70 per cent water. And its oceans and rivers are being pumped full of chemicals, waste, oil, litter and other pollutants, destroying the delicate balance of nature. Millions of gallons of our most precious natural resource are being pumped into data centres that run AI engines by tech oligarchs.
But what if water was keeping score? This is the question that poet LAUREN MASON poses in a long form poem set to the ambient drones of A-SUN AMISSA on the album Water Scores.
A-SUN AMISSA is the brainchild of Glossop based musician, artist, Gizeh Records label boss and all-round creative type Richard Knox who, alongside former PROFANE and TUTHERUN guitarist Luke Bhatia and clarinetist Claire Knox, create atmospheric soundscapes that veer between the quietly introspective and crushingly oppressive. Their impressive 2024 album Ruins Era, and the mesmerising live shows supporting it have seen the band amass a respectful following, at least among those who enjoy the more avant-garde side of rock music. LAUREN MASON is the former bass player of the now defunct experimental doom band TORPOR and a published poet, so as musical collaborations go, this one makes perfect sense.
What they’ve created is nothing short of a masterpiece. Water Scores is presented as a single 37-minute suite of music that ebbs and flows like the waters which make up its lyrical/poetical subject matter. While it demands to be heard as a single piece, it can be divided into distinct passages that examine and describe the experiences, thoughts and actions of its main character, which is water as an entity and a concept.
In the first of these passages, LAUREN asks in her softly spoken yet assured tones: “And what if water was keeping score / Of everything flushed through her, / All she swallowed without agreement. / All that’s been stolen or banished seaward?” Throughout the poem, A-SUN AMISSA match the tone and feelings conjured by the words, at first haunting and contemplative, with waves of sampled hydrophone and guitars awash with effects sounding like recordings taken from the depths of the ocean.
Later, MASON addresses the tragic impact of polluted waters on the sea life that relies on it to survive, and as she does so, Claire Knox’s clarinet sounds like the pained screeches of dying gulls. “She’s tallying fish now outnumbered by glitter / Seabirds bound in oil, each migration damned / Each homecoming swerved.” There’s a calm rage to LAUREN‘s voice as she delivers her lines, which forces the listener to sit up and listen intently. The message is serious, political, existential and spiritual, and the musical accompaniment only serves to carry that message further and cement it within the listener’s psyche. The words interweave with the drones and screeches of feedback, and it’s especially chilling when a repeated refrain of the words “SOS” wash away, her voice becoming faint and disappearing beneath the waves of noise.
At the album’s midpoint, the focus shifts, away from water herself, to the agents of her doom. “Now this an act of God. None of this a natural flood, none of this inevitable.” As she does so, the drones swell like a haunting cry, tension building as it reaches crescendo and released with the boom of a distorted guitar.
She takes aim at the governments and corporations who pump pollutants into the seas with a scathing review of shady practices, corruption and lack of accountability. Coincidentally, while Water Scores was recorded last year, before the Epstein files were released, it’s strangely prescient that the repeated use of the word “redacted” is used to highlight her point. “Causes: production, combustion, carbon, [redacted]. / Predictions data research knowledge [redacted] / Profits [redacted] intent [redacted] harm [redacted] crime [redacted]”
This far into the album, one can be forgiven for feeling utter despair at the state of the world as described by MASON and her band of not-so-merry ladies and gentleman, but thankfully there is a cathartic payoff in the album’s closing passage, which deals with Water taking her mighty revenge against her oppressors: “Fluid boiling, wild eyed typhoon, her fever led delirium. The Sea now screaming all the curse words she ever learned.” The music behind it just as terrifyingly triumphant, all deep drones, rumbling percussion and harrowed screeches. And in the final moments, LAUREN begins to sing rather than just deliver poetry. “She’s done with warnings” she repeats in a soulful timbre that is strangely soothing despite its stark message.
More than an album, Water Scores is stark and powerful warning cry that will leave its mark on all who take the time to step foot in its waters.
Rating: 9/10
Water Scores is out now via Gizeh Records.
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