Ambivalence is one of those words people like to use when they don’t want to admit they’re torn. In Haptic’s case, it’s less indecision and more a working method: holding opposing states in place long enough to see what kind of sound leaks out.

Across two extended pieces, "Ambivalence" finds Haptic - that is, Steven Hess, Joseph Clayton Mills, and Adam Sonderberg - operating in a space they’ve been refining for years: somewhere between composition and erosion. Their history, spanning installations, film work, and performances in institutions that tend to prefer silence dressed as art, shows up here not as prestige but as discipline. They know how to wait.

“Late Work I” unfolds like a system slowly revealing its own instability. Recorded in London with the addition of Mark Wastell, it begins in near-stasis, a low-density field where sound feels provisional, almost reluctant to commit. Small events appear, hover, and then either integrate or vanish. There’s a sense of microscopic negotiation, as if each element is testing whether it deserves to remain. Over time, the piece thickens, though never in a dramatic way. It accumulates rather than builds, which is a subtle but important distinction. You don’t notice the change until you realize you’ve been listening differently for the past ten minutes.

“Late Work II”, assembled across multiple locations and expanded with performers like Sarah Hughes and Seth Cooke, feels more dispersed, less centered. If the first piece suggests a room, this one suggests a network. Sounds emerge from different directions, loosely coordinated but not entirely aligned. There’s a quiet tension between cohesion and fragmentation, as if the piece is constantly deciding whether to cohere or fall apart. It does both, repeatedly.

What Haptic continue to do well, almost annoyingly well, is restraint. This kind of long-form electroacoustic work often collapses under the weight of its own seriousness, mistaking duration for depth. "Ambivalence" avoids that trap by maintaining a kind of internal skepticism. Nothing is allowed to dominate for too long. Textures are introduced, explored, and then quietly undermined. Stability is always temporary.
There are echoes of reductionist improvisation and post-lowercase aesthetics, but the trio doesn’t fully commit to austerity. There’s a subtle richness in the material, a willingness to let density creep in when necessary, only to strip it back again. It’s a constant recalibration of presence and absence, which fits the title a little too perfectly.

Mastering by Giuseppe Ielasi ensures that even the smallest gestures carry weight, which matters when your music depends on the listener noticing things they would normally ignore. And that’s really the unspoken demand here: attention. Not passive, not distracted. The kind that most people reserve for problems, not for sound.

Is it enjoyable? That depends on your definition. It’s not pleasant in any conventional sense, but it is absorbing, in the way watching something slowly take shape can be, even if you’re not entirely sure what it’s becoming.

Haptic’s seventeenth release doesn’t try to resolve its contradictions. It just sustains them, patiently, until they start to feel like the point rather than the problem. Which, inconveniently, is often how things actually work.