I’ve been listening to and writing about the work of Belgrade’s Manja Ristić for as long as this site has been around, and by now I have reviewed more releases by her than anyone else, which, needless to say, is well deserved. Her latest work, The Scaffold, is a collaboration with Estonia-based project Murmer (a.k.a. Patrick Tubin McGinley) and probably my favorite entry in the Unfathomless catalog since 2019’s being there. Born out of a “friendship in sound and constant appreciation for mutual efforts” (Ristić’s words) and conceptually inspired by a preliminary recording made by McGinley of the titular “singing scaffold,” the handsome disc presents a pair  of patient, considered phonography pieces full of intrigue and intimacy. This is languid, tranquil music, the colors layered with careful brushstrokes and the canvases sewn together with steady hands, but it also has the subtle tension that builds when domestic interiors become less like shelter and more like confinement (unsurprising, given that the artists began exchanging materials in spring of 2020). Ristić is fond of what I like to call “thin sounds,” which she lifts from the water with her trusty hydrophones and from the air via precise mic placement, and there are plenty at play here; the textures of “Zamišljena Sjena Vjetra” are as fine and fragile as water-strider legs, distant tactility making the smallest of ripples in the whispered drone of a silent home. The final ten-or-so minutes are breathtaking, thanks to a sublime tonal current that pools in through a forgotten pipe. The more active “Kaugpääs; Antenn” gently carries us to an open window, where we can hear the murmur (pun intended) of the rain and the birds and the bustle below, all cast in a nocturnal warmth by the sound of Gregorian chants carried on the breeze.