The Spanish composer and sound artist on the fragile solemnity of a late-period Low masterpiece.
The premise of One Track Mind is pretty simple: I ask artists to pick one track that means a lot to them – either something they’ve discovered recently, something that’s been with them for years, or one that reminds them of a specific time in their life or career – and tell me what makes it so special to them. I get to talk to the artists I love, and they get to talk about the artists they love. Love all round!
Spanish composer and sound artist Arvin Dola works at the intersection of music, cinema, and performance. His background in scoring for film and theatre informs a deeply textural approach, where sound becomes a vehicle for memory, emotion, and unresolved narratives.
His new LP O GHOST is his debut album release and is inspired by absence, memory, and the weight of unresolved time. Written in the wake of personal loss, it folds grief into a subtle kind of presence. Drawing on hauntology and shaped by Dola’s work in film and performance, the record blends ambient, drone, and disintegrating motifs that never quite land or leave.
For his One Track Mind selection, Arvin has chosen to highlight a track from an incredible album which also happens to be one of my all-time favourites.
Arvin Dola on Low – Dancing and Blood
I’m not quite sure how to explain the emotions this song by Low stirs in me, but I can describe the images that come to mind every time I listen to it. I see a meadow, with a forest in the distance. A group of people moves slowly, wrapped in long, earth-toned robes. It’s winter, and a faint layer of frost glimmers on the grass.
I remember that the first time I heard it, I felt something significant, perhaps a kind of joy in realizing that one of my favorite bands since my teenage years had taken a more experimental, darker turn, somewhere between the ancestral and the avant-garde (as a fan of Coil or Dead Can Dance, I guess it makes sense).
Mimi’s voice and lyrics give the song a fragile solemnity that moves you, while the percussive loop swells like the echo of a pagan ritual. The guitar lines lead you, step by step, toward a sort of abyss from which you don’t emerge until the vocal drones fade out, over six minutes later.
I remember the time I first discovered this album and how I listened to it on repeat for days. I love the place it takes me to; it connects me with something greater, with a vast, boundless universe where our problems seem so small. Strangely, I have no contextual memory of that listening experience. With this song, everything happens inwardly, as if my mind refused to separate me from the sensations and landscapes it awakens within. Strange, isn’t it?
Arvin Dola – O GHOST is out now
https://arvindola.bandcamp.com/album/o-ghost
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