Back in 2017 we wrote about Pastel, the solo recording project of LA-based musician and artist Gabriel Brenner. The release, absent, just dust, was an ambitious, unsettling and moving attempt by Brenner to portray the contemporary and historical experience of Native American peoples. “Rooted in themes of memory and violence,” we wrote of the EP released on Very Jazzed, “[absent, just dust is a] sonic representation of the silencing faced by Native peoples, the razing not just of buildings or cultures but the very language with which such destruction could be described.”
The release marked Pastel as a project with a uniquely ambitious vision, more an extension of Brenner’s artwork than musical side project. Through vocals, textures and tones, not to mention silence itself, Brenner conjures soundscapes that move beyond the traditional song, operating with higher intentions. But to cast the style in such a light is to risk suggesting that Pastel is some dense and inaccessible experiment in metaphor, when in reality it is intuitive and heartfelt. Released in 2018, standalone single ‘Close‘ put the idea to bed, “refocusing on a rich pop sound that would be at home amongst the chart toppers,” as we wrote at the time.
Today, Pastel unveils a brand new single, ‘Moon Landing’, a song which solidifies Brenner’s ability to weave stark violence and warm emotion into a single sound. The first look at his forthcoming debut LP, the track is an extremely personal examination of loss and grief, as well as the love that underpins such emotions. His mother dying of cancer, the song finds Brenner at her side, unable to help or intervene in the slow creep of time as the seconds pass away. As the title suggests, the image is compared to that of a rocket launch, a departure from one world to another, all locked in on an unalterable schedule. “Feel her counting down an ending,” Brenner sings, the intensity of his words rising, “’til there’s liftoff.”
Emerging from wind-based field recordings and gently picked acoustic guitar from Warren Hildebrand of Foxes in Fiction, the song proceeds with a haunting hesitancy, Brenner’s vocals warbling across the quiet. The aforementioned liftoff triggers an abrupt change, the background noise growing harsh and pressing as the keys arpeggiate, a loss of control as the processes kick into wild motion. The finale of the track simmers down once more, the furious action passed but still visible in great contrails across the sky.
The artwork for the single features an image of the Challenger disaster in 1986, which broke up seventy-three seconds after launch. The event was broadcast live on TV, a presenter counting down as the camera focuses on the waiting shuttle, strapped onto the launch pad, waiting to go. And go it did, arcing upwards in silent motion before disintegrating into a sublime plume of sparks and smoke, the gathered audience left with no other option than to watch the awesome spectacle.
The remains of the crew were retrieved by marine salvage crews several weeks later, and the fact that those who were destined to experience life beyond earth ended up on the ocean floor changed the American view of space exploration for decades. But with ‘Moon Landing’, Pastel rewrites the story of the Challenger, or else reframes the course of those aboard. Every space shuttle sheds components as it rises, and Brenner takes the physical body as just another component. Death not as some spectacular return to earth but the final unburdening, every physical weight left behind for the final ascension, the spirit eventually able to turn back and look down upon our blue and brilliant world.
Gently landing on the surface
Her legs are dangling
From the craterIs it different from above?
Are you ever really resting?
