A goner is in some way fated. On the precipice of vanishing, disappearing, dying, being ‘gone’. I think that’s kind of weird. The same way I become ‘my corpse’ when I die, not me but somehow a different object. Thus, ‘goner’ is evocative of a personal limbo, it denotes that its subject is under a cloud which no one else is. Its something akin to the living dead, but carries with it a more humanistic tone, not as harsh as the ‘cursed’ or ‘damned’. A goner is something else entirely, like the man with no name riding into the sunset, shot in the gut, or something.

Ilyas Ahmed’s new album is called Goner. And it unfortunately took me a lot longer to realize the musical significance of the title than I’d like to admit. Ahmed has long crafted, along with like-minded artists such as Grouper (who appears on this album), songs that are on the brink of falling apart completely. If you pull at the smallest loose thread, a miniscule fiber in the whole of any one song, it is as though the guitars and drums would collapse into themselves and Ahmed’s voice would drift off slowly like some dying jet trail.

There’s unmistakable feeling while listening to the album that it is teetering, and when the last track finishes the whole ship is gonna careen right over in the edge of the earth into the mist, as though the album could not be replayed, as though the physical media would disintegrate upon ending. I think ‘Goner’ is meant to make you feel like you’re listening to it for the last time. Awhile back Digitalis had the chance to interview Ahmed, who noted that he, like most anyone, thinks about the world coming to an end. I think those little scary thoughts we have right before going to bed while toss, turn and digest food, thoughts about how imminent the end is, are thoughts that Ahmed effortlessly channels into music.

Though the work is certainly lo-fi, there is an attention to musical craftsmanship and production. This is not the kind folk that borders on drone, the songs are clearly structured and articulated. Whereas earlier Grouper albums seemed utterly submerged (which is a perfectly acceptable thing, because those albums are amazing), there is a real clarity about ‘Goner’. And it is not as though it lacks vibrancy or polish either—it doesn’t—these are beautiful, intricate, earlier on feet-stomping affairs: meditative by way of being precise. But they feel scrubbed loose of their skin, tattered and destructible, which is of course why they are so emotionally resonant. I’m sure a lot of what Ahmed has done (and Grouper, more overtly) has been called ‘haunting’ ad nauseum. But ‘Goner’ feels more nostalgic than haunting, there is a real longing, especially on the crazy-horse styled opener ‘Earn Your Blood’ and its follower ‘Out Again’. Some of the tracks are evocative of the kind of acutely melancholy, expertly repetitive acoustic work of, say, Thom Yorke (‘Love after Love’) and Mark Kozelek (‘Some of None’). Yet it is all wholly Ahmed’s own, the barely-there voice swooning over the aforementioned threat of destruction, musically, physically, etc. For me, I’m not ‘comparing’ Ilyas Ahmed to the likes of (certain aspects of) Radiohead or Red House Painters as much as I am saying ‘These are three separate artists who really get how to convey *this* certain feeling’. Much of pysch-folk or new weird America, or whatever you want to call it, often succumbs to being more on the pysch-side, a bit over indulgent and unfocused. Sometimes it is hard to delineate between deliberate lack of focus and laziness, and then one wonders if there is even a true difference.

Ahmed doesn’t walk that fine line, he’s an artist whose capable of realizing that meaning is same thing as form, what is conveyed is the same as how its conveyed. It’s what makes his releases, ‘Goner’ included, so accessible and yet so eerie and distinct. Ilyas Ahmed has established himself as some kind of troubadour, I don’t know of what, you’ll just have to listen to this album and, humbly, trust me. 10/10 -- John Ganiard (10 June, 2009)