This year’s Drone Cinema Film Festival will feature nine pieces, including David Kwan’s Waveshaper.

This year’s Drone Cinema Film Festival will feature nine pieces, including David Kwan’s Waveshaper.

This year’s Drone Cinema Film Festival will feature nine pieces, including David Kwan’s Waveshaper (pictured above).

Last July, I finally came to terms with dying, after decades of being terrified of it. I have the overwhelming piano music of Ukrainian composer Lubomyr Melnyk, which I experienced in Chapel Performance Space during Substrata 1.5 festival, to thank.

For much of my life, I have sought refuge from thoughts of mortality in drone music and its seemingly infinite sustenance. I’ve come to think of this music as an impermeable womb that keeps all disturbing morbid ideation at bay. For some reason, though, Melnyk’s swarming, repetitive tones—coupled with the vaulting arches of Chapel’s old concert space—made me think I could handle nothingness, or, more optimistically, merging with the oneness. What a relief!…

Dave Segal is a journalist and DJ living in Seattle. He has been writing about music since 1983. His stuff has appeared in Gale Research’s literary criticism series of reference books, Creem (when...