Zeid Bushnaq - Lapse

Zeid Bushnaq

Lapse
self-released; 2017

​3.7 out of 5

By Dom Eagle

Zeid Bushnaq is originally from Jordan and currently lives in Manchester, UK. He’s finishing his architecture degree and has been writing and producing music for seven-eight years. This definitely shows in his work as Lapse is a beautiful piece of music. Time surely lapsed when listening to this continuous piece. Yes, all albums are supposedly continuous but what’s different about Bushnaq’s album is that it is comprised of one continuous 30-minute instrumental piece. It’s definitely a clever way of masking the fact that he simply wrote a song which is half an hour in length. It is broken up into eight sections, however, so I suppose that passes it off as an album with variations and divergences.

​Lapse opens with an electric guitar arpeggio which reverberates into the atmosphere. It plays atop a slowly and precisely thudding drum beat. The original arpeggio is accompanied by echoing guitars playing a myriad of varying melodies. Some distortion gradually enters the mix as the drums become a little more frantic and the layers of noise become a little more cluttered and chaotic. There’s a growing sound to the opening of this eight-sectioned album, and that’s so crucial to an instrumental piece.

​There needs to be a build to keep the listener hooked. As the drums fall away, the guitars all pile atop one another and reverberate into infinity. There’s something otherworldly about this noise. Perhaps it is the lack of a human voice which induces this effect, but I think it’s the space that this song fills. I think it’s the way in which the music swirls and evaporates somewhere far off in the distance and the sound is constantly evolving, and there’s no clear point at which one part of the album/song/piece ends and another piece starts.

Again, while it’s hard to tell where one section ends and the next starts, there’s a moment at which all the music levels out and slow, thudding drums crash into view. This seems to be a new section, but perhaps numerous sections have passed the listener by at this point and we’re just too absorbed in the world of Lapse to notice. Time has lapsed, one might joke. Anyway, the guitar at this point twinkles and glimmers behind the powerful, exploding drum beat which thuds and thumps ever onwards. It sounds as if there’s so little going on here, but there are so many guitar patterns piling atop one another at a near-silent level. Sounds chug and grow far off in the distance. 

This was definitely an experience, 30 minutes that you’ll be glad you spent on an instrumental piece. This is a hard piece of art to define; it’s progressive rock in many senses, but it’s also atmospheric music at other times. There are so many sounds present that one couldn’t be criticized for mistaking warped guitar solos for electronica. You’ll have to listen for yourself.

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