The piano is a ghostly, lonely instrument; one that demonstrates itself as such an apparition in those moments of lonely housesitting. its how Drawl’s Swingsets found me a couple weekends back. The eight recordings are not entirely piano focused, although the opening track sets quite a definitive, darkly brooding tone for this state of affairs. Often though, you’ll find Drawl playing with a minimal bass (like on the bloodshot clamors of “Possessed Object”) or a swinging kick drum (on the aptly titled “What A Lot I Will Buy From You”). Sounds feel found, dislocated, and unruly. It’s a palette that’s oft the inverse of your grandfather’s 78 rpms, brilliantly swerving in its own crooked step, especially as its side A culminates in unnerved thrashing noise bout (“Who Among Us Is Not”).
Now Elliot home-dubs the tapes at Drongo HQ, so a fair amount of silence is to be expected at the end of side A. This is inherently fantastic, as you may need a moment to reset yourself for side B’s bag of ghostly tricks n’ treats. Long For the World reintroduces us to piercing harmonics–this time of stringed variety. From Sight, a nearly 10 minute endeavor, recalls early Serpent Season, lingering with guitar chords in the midst of great blown-out debris before feedback promises to swallow it whole. Provision of Service follows next, blowing out trip hop acoustics for massive industrial scuzz n’ fuzz, before we finally come down to a new normal with Lapsed. Swingsets has been a steady Drongo team player, but this latest release feels more precise and uncanny; yeah it may start ghostly, but it quickly peckers up into a monolithic tower of raw sonic power.
The facility I work in doesn’t have a functional AC. It just pushes the outside air inside. Thus, on cold days, it’s fecking cold. On “Now to be Expected February Santa Ana Days,” it nearly boils. Yet, the thing to know about a “Santa Ana” is that if you’re in the right patch of shade on a lunch break, it can be pleasurable to feel those wind gusts. Moments like that practically beg for a melting, gelatinous drone tape.
It’s been rather hard to confirm if Matt Jencik had Santa Ana winds on his mind while in Chicago recording “Matt and Lyra.” The noted basshead (he did a very good job on Don Cab 2) and alum of Kranky (he was an Imploder) just seems to genuinely enjoy exploring hardware. The Lyra of the titular release is a Russian Lyra-8 synthesizer that Jencik was more inclined to utilize for personal usage; he’s a huge proponent of those “fuzzy frequencies.” Yet, he quickly changed course and ended with a collection of five pieces for sharing. They teeter between open-armed sound baths and oozy drone metal. Fortunately, none of this is scary stuff, as all the pieces have titles that are very funny and will make you spill milk out of your nose.
If you’ve been following Park 70’s Labradfordian experiments and low-ground hums, then it is rather likely Jencik’s tonal displays will be heady grippers. The five pieces are often less about the buildup, either quickly dropping you en media res to the middle of a storm or quickly bringing in to the picture a windy gust. On “Yes Pussyfooting” (funny title), it’s the former, actively maintaining ominous, monolithic chills that combat Santa Ana winds. Black & White Striped Tights is the latter, quickly fading into a dreamy “all time stops here right now” metallic slab. Of course though, Side A’s quick sketches are no match for a mighty Side B longform. Clandestine Half Pipe evokes strong womb to tomb energy. Beginning with a most lovely jangle (shoegaze ‘95 vintage stuff!), it quickly stills itself into a stone that lets in a fuzzy low end to glide down stream. As that low end synth takes over the composition, my mind started to load up the credits of The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth… and the Santa Ana winds suddenly seemed to dissipate.
Limited Cassette housed in custom JCard art designed by illustrator Paul Clark & includes the Explorers Series slip cover available at the Trouble in Mind Bandcamp Page
About this time last year, I had seemed to mentally surmise a genuine notion of what Astral Editions was likely to be. However, Nate Cross has the audacity to subvert that expectation with gusto; he literally just announced two more labels in the AS univers for fecks sake! Over 2021, AE developed into a free-for-all of music that rules of its own merits yet needs a freeform space to exist outside of the Spirits jazz canon. As a result though, Astral Editions has often erred towards the vinyl (silly idea! Tapes or nothing!) freewheels its visual component (outside of the spine, which is really a nice gesture <3), and actually has albums that border closer to a warped vision of Windham Hill than anything else I can recall. In fact, right now at the start of 2022, I feel quite confident stating that Astral Editions is the closest ancillary to a Windham Hill style label manufacturing tapes (go to Cached Media for CDs) at the moment. It’s no small feat, and it’s not something that even dawned on me until I dove back into three tapes from the present moment the past back half of the year.
Blogger’s note: It should be noted though, that when I wrote this, I did not know Nate Cross had handed curation over to burgeoning Columbus, Ohio rockstar legends Jen Powers and Matthew Rolin. They may not have picked these tapes for the imprint, yet they clearly are of the same genius flock and insipid spirit. I truly, sincerely cannot wait to see what tapestry they spring forth with and carry the imprint towards. I hear tapes from Shells(!) and Sunburned Hand of the Man(!!), amongst others, are on the way, which is always a good thing.
Orquesta del Tiempo Perdido – traantjes
Open up the booklet for traantjes and you’re presented with nearly two dozen names and instruments–most notable might be pedal steel and drums. Look a little further down and you realize that the initial rhythm section was pieced together *just* before it all hit the fritz in mid-March of 2020. Look a little further up and you’ll see that all compositions are a product of the sick twisted mind of Jeroen Kinnman. There’s scant information that matters outside of all that in all honesty.
Across the 12 tracks Kinnman has assembled, traantjes holds no bars back from what it wants to achieve. Can we get arhythmic math rock jam-packed with like five instruments fighting for the title of sole survivor? Absolutely. How about space age bachelor pad lounge grooves going off the fritz and reassembling into music for a speedrun? Of course, that’s often the main course. Could Kinnman perhaps do a vocder trick or add a litany of zany samples? That one’s on the house, dummy! traantjes noodles through these styles without becoming completely trapped or wasting the immensity of this excursion; it’s density and unexpected left turns become an act of sheer strength, providing that you are game for the unexpected.
While it’d be easy to peg the veracity of sounds as bordering on Orange Milk or even Crash Symbols’ more electronic heavy fusions, there is a clear groundwork for this sound. Central to the whole affair are the drums and pedal steel that beget this entire world to exist in the first place. For the pedal steel, it comes from the emotional versatility that the instrument can offer and even subvert; it doesn’t just yearn here exactly, but often tickles. For the drums, it’s the fact that it offers a propulsive punch necessary to act as a rhythmic bar for five instruments to fight over. As a result, one track may actually be a slowdown reprieve before nose diving towards a sputtering BPM fest.
Bevel – Angler Senses
When I talk about Astral Editions going “free-for-all” on freeform, Bevel’s Angler Senses is another prime example. The five people (+ Bill MacKay featured on a couple tracks) are lead by Via Nuon, who might as well be crafting a new fangled oral tradition of his own accord. Their nineteen tracks have a chamber folk sound bordering on a reimagined Appalachian psychedelia. The thing about those tracks? They like to gallop in and out around ninety seconds.. It’s surprisingly competent in the adherence to this “we played our song until we ran out of ideas” principle, that keeps ideas beguilingly fresh and concise, yet also lucid enough to run a cohesive mirage together. enacting lyrical vignettes of dilapidated enclaves and arid waterways. In fact, hiding within the release is itself a piece of lost wisdom, “Ancient Air”, (“a piece sung by an old lutenist at an inn in Nankin in 1198 A.D. discovered & notated by Chiang K’uei”) that still feels of today,
J.R. Bohannon – Compulsions
Bohannon’s Compulsions is the current Astral Editions release on deck and (in spite of the rather Orange Milk-esque cover) perhaps the most straightforward release to come out of the label so far. If you told me I was listening to a 1985 Windham Hill album, I would believe you full heartedly and say something like “FUCK! This label really doesn’t miss, does it?” because Bohannon’s 2020/2021 era recordings really feel timeless and patient. Bohannon’s repertoire involves acoustic guitar, bouts of pedal steel, and even light synthesizer into his solo material. Compulsions presents the acoustic guitar in all its textured manners, occasionally throwing in those other pieces for good measure. Often, Bohannon strikes up a series of chords and plays a small motif or riff before pausing; that brevity allows it to glide for a second where you can’t quite feel what comes next, yet instinctively anticipate the next part of the dream. However, Bohannon is savvy enough not to limit this to just the guitar, and when a pedal steel overdub or droning synthesizer fade out is brought in, it shocks the system and feels like you just discovered a secret zone. For a subtle, short tape, that’s all I need.
Record loops, intentional or not, are one of my favorite elements in experimental music. The first time I heard NON’s Pagan Muzak on YouTube, I was hooked. Other discoveries like Gum, Ironing, and AMK solidified my love for this facet of repurposed consumer goods. I even flirted with aspirations of becoming a hip hop DJ scratcher in my early twenties. So going into this tape I wasn’t a newcomer to this corner of the sound universe.
The opaline keyboard textures of “Pygmalion” collide with short loops that cut in and out of the mix in a disorienting fashion before the listener is pounded by short rhythmic loops on top of an A.M. static salad (Anyone remember that project A.M. Salad?). “Styled” has a lot of old fashioned stylus abuse going on and flanged snapshots of bygone eras. Lots of movement, asymmetry, and outsider art scratching.
The personality on the second side, “Out of Vogue,” is much closer to my experience with Wolfgang Voigt’s project Gas, where reverb drenched loops hover unchanging for long periods of time. This one really gets me in the zone.
Bulbils – A Smashing Adventure (Heimat Der Katastrophe)
YAI – Flowers From Home (Not Not Fun)
Budokan Boys – So Broken Up About You Dying (self released)
Jason Crumer – Thin Ice (No Rent Records)
Kobold – The Legend of the Wicked Pirates (Heimat Der Katastrophe)
Andrea Pensado – split w/ Jacob Winans (Refulgent Sepulchre)
Peter Compo – Films (Tower To The Sea)
Grimdor – The Shadow of the Past (Out of Season)
Lexagon – Feminine Care (Ratskin)
Marc Merza – split w/ T. Gowdy (TBD Tapes)
Bulbils – A Smashing Adventure (Heimat Der Katastrophe)
YAI – Flowers From Home (Not Not Fun)
Budokan Boys – So Broken Up About You Dying (self released)
Jason Crumer – Thin Ice (No Rent Records)
Kobold – The Legend of the Wicked Pirates (Heimat Der Katastrophe)
Andrea Pensado – split w/ Jacob Winans (Refulgent Sepulchre)
Peter Compo – Films (Tower To The Sea)
Grimdor – The Shadow of the Past (Out of Season)
Lexagon – Feminine Care (Ratskin)
Marc Merza – split w/ T. Gowdy (TBD Tapes)
Okay, let’s make one thing clear: I love field recordings coupled with synthesis, whether they contrast or compliment one another. So it was no surprise that I found most of the tracks on this tape (a benefit for ending violence/incarceration against Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people) to be right up my alley. One of the cliched criticisms leveled at this genre is that “it’s just background music,” to which I’d reply that I use harsh noise and death metal as background music for cooking or working out, so stuff it.
This is one of the best compilations I’ve heard of modern ambient. Come to think of it, it doesn’t seem like compilations are much of a thing in ambient music. While there might not be much new ground being broken here, where tracks by OVRSCN resemble something from a dramatic scene in Stranger Things (I know, lame reference), there are no filler tracks on this one. MP Hawkins’ track, “Shells,” is my favorites on here. A diary entry of melancholic depth resembling a more nuanced version of Alleypisser. And there’s enough sonic variety for my taste. There’s processed instruments and voice on many tracks (raven’s use of cello on “another naive playthrough”) as well as the synth pads that you’d expect. It’s a bit strange how short most of the tracks are, for a genre where most tracks are longer than ten minutes, and some of the tracks feel like excerpts rather than full pieces, but that’s a pithy complaint. Better to be left wanting more, I suppose.
Viimeinen loosely translates to ‘rough’ or ‘final’ in Finnish. On this self-titled tape’s A side track, “Dissolved Metal Salts Cloak Your Lips with a Bitter Film,” we’re treated to shifting episodes of static sheets of radio waves swimming around the stereo field. This is a slow descent into a droning sea of TV static punctuated by obscured fog horns. Sudden shifts into slurping tape loops keep things dynamic and asymmetric.
On the B side “Deformed Faces Agape at You From a Tangle of Limbs” opens with some haunting bowed reverberations and organic tape mulch textures that dissolve into hypnotic loops, like industrial machine belts seizing up in odd time signatures. There’s a nice usage of crescendos at various points in this release, as well as a few jump edits and slow track fades. Straddling the territories of harsher textures and manipulated field recordings, this tape hits all my sweet spots. Recommended!
James Searfoss is everywhere, all over the floor of your local noise labels; in the liner notes, under a gaggle of names, almost always hoarding the electronics in search of whatever adventure it might bring. The sounds and loops are versatile enough to bounce from Orb Tapes to FTAM and Already Dead, pushing listeners down a breadcrumb trail of various genre spots in search of cosmic gumbo. I didn’t anticipate that I’d ordered such a slab of cosmic gumbo and would soon be into Searfoss’ orbit until I happened to connect the dots with Nancy Bigfoot’s Polyester Honey (ADT364) and a split with Women Under the Pore under Searfoss’ Moth Bucket alias.
The Polyester Honey C36 finds the Nancy Bigfoot seven-piece free jazz ensemble trying to pass between electronic-aided-jazz longforms and scrupulous interludes. The action can turn psychotic or unfathomably chill depending on the side and minute you are attuned to, thus begetting a full listen. Side A’s Mustelid Jabberjaw is a hulking mass much psychotic, actively breaking and tossing everything down in sight, yet twiddling and quivering in brief spurts. It crackles! It tackles! It it-well yeah it electroshocks. Searfoss’ contribution involving tape loops and electronics is a welcomely visceral low end to tango to.
Meanwhile, Searfoss’ Moth Bucket split alongside Women of the Pore (for the FTAM label) is decisively less free-jazz and more “sick set” free noise. Tape splicing and looping techniques abound through the course of Searfoss’ 15 minute side, radiating a misbegotten Radiophonic / Children’s Electric Company aura. Sometimes it crackles like cicadas or murks like bog water, while other times the feature of a disjointed xylophone keeps a perky, upbeat counter. Of course, as the track continues, it devolves further into noise splices that are less privy to bright melodies and more towards twitchy drumming. It’s a well-warranted complimentary piece to Women of the Pore, the New Brunswick “bunker jazz” project that also has been popping up since 2019 from around Orb Tapes and its ilk. FTAM notes the generally noise piece’s strange sonic qualities akin to Ann Arbor noise musics circa 2003; I was five years old and have never stepped foot in the state. You’d be best to trust Mr. FTAM though, he’s quite the hoot and this tape from summer was a well warranted return to Type I tape.
Polyester Honey is sold out at the source! Moth Bucket / Women of the Pore’s split is currently available at FTAM Production’s Bandcamp.
The liner notes for this release state: “These tracks are intended as contemporary meditation tools. The frequency of these tunes and the sounds used foster inner exploration for the modern spiritual seeker.” Definitely relaxing, open-ended soundscapes throughout these six tracks from this prolific Italian artist.
Warm, airy notes drift through the listeners consciousness on Polveriere, where it feels one is hearing notes floating across a large body of water. Kind of an ironic title, as nothing about this track feels explosive whatsoever. The same holds true for Segnali Distorti, which extends the mood of the precious track. Very little distortion is heard here. This is a trivial complaint. There’s always a gap in between the viewpoint of artist and outside observer.
The tracks that I don’t get into as much involve arpeggios framed by pitch bent notes, like the title track and Analogico Spleen. That’s just a matter of taste in synth voices, I suppose. Decide for yourself. Color Speranza blends muted textures with hesitant arpeggios in a more successful fashion, evoking the wonder of a cloudless nighttime sky.
While I’m no aficionado of ambient/new age musics, I found this album to be very soothing and great background music for nighttime reading or meditation.
