Camille Altay invites us on a sonic journey through the enigmatic realm of the "Melanie Klein Bottle." Through an improvisational performance with FM synthesis, Altay crafts an experience that traverses the boundaries of perception and self-discovery. The piece opens with a series of tense drone stabs before starlit arpeggios come to the fore. This is not easy listening, but it is nonetheless immersive and transformative. After 15 minutes, a razorback dronescape begins to swirl around the stereo field. A delicate interplay forms between the lightweight arpeggios and deep guttural synth growls. Spatial shifts give way to piercing sirens. Halfway through, the tension reaches a resounding fever pitch as elements roar upward from the depths and shutter abruptly. By 30 minutes the low end of the mix begins to move like deep ocean currents, filling the ear with dark, ethereal moans, while overhead arpeggios twinkle in and out.

Inspired by their background as a painter and their exploration of spatial orientation, Altay skillfully weaves together elements of sound, topology, and object relations, culminating in an intricate tapestry of musical expression.

According to Altay, the album's composition travels through two shapes, akin to traveling around a non-orientable surface, like a Klein bottle, where the inside and outside invert into one another. Here the inside and outside merge, bending and buckling the relationship between figure and ground. Altay employs arpeggiated sequences to mirror the contours of this shape, inviting the listener to immerse themselves in the ambiguity of the experience.

Altay's queer identity and their fascination with the boundaries of self and other inform the thematic undertones of "Melanie Klein Bottle." The music becomes a vessel, a conduit for exploration and understanding. It encapsulates the complexities of human relationships, oscillating between containment and release, the known and the unknown. “I’m drawn to make material records of messy situations,” Altay explains. “I will set up conditions for something to happen, and that unpredictable condition becomes a collaborative partner in the work.” This chance collaboration adds an element of vulnerability, mirroring the inherent messiness of existence.

Throughout the album, Altay captures the restlessness of looping, a shifting ground, momentum, vibration, oscillations which are never the same twice. The synthesizer voices refuse complete cooperation, despite prior programming. Here, the artist and listener are meant to embrace imperfection and incomplete control as essential aspects of the creative journey. “Presence is inescapable,“ Altay says. “There is certainly a space, but that space is also an object. We are playing, all the time, with our orientation to a world which is inevitably non-orientable. Playing at separation of ourselves from a container and others.” The resulting sonic material becomes a tactile language, a form of touch that resonates deeply within our terrestrial experience.

In "Melanie Klein Bottle," Altay encapsulates their pursuit of conversing with the unknown, engaging in a dialogue with the subconscious and unexplored realms of creativity. Light and dark meld into one another. Neither duality is easily discernible. The music evolves, breathes, and changes alongside the artist, offering a glimpse into the transient nature of their personal expression. Through this sonic exploration, Altay invites us to embrace the inherent fluidity of being, where performance and mastery are not goals but rather meaningful waypoints on a path of self-discovery.

With this record, Altay extends an invitation to connect with the profound possibilities of existence and the undeniable influence of the spaces we inhabit. The music reflects the contours of our lives, the moments of hypnosis, and the conditions that shape our journey. Through the medium of sound, we are asked to remember, feel, and transcend the boundaries of our conscious selves that we might trace the contours of our unconscious.