Zach Rowden – Like a Mirror Does

7.20.22 by Jacob DeRaadt

Four track loops utilizing acoustic fragments and deft tape manipulation from one half of Tongue Depressor.

Stereo fields are utilized to their utmost potential.

Bells ringing down the hallways of memory, tape clicking adding it’s own time signature in call and response form.

Elements slowly swirl around the mix, congealing on different themes of tiny significance, these short terse loops revolving around one another.

Side A slowly builds itself up into a homespun mess of interrupted, tension-buildin’ chimes and overtone harmonies while the tape machine’s take up reel spins out in real time in non-treated fashion. I’m especially drawn to the sounds of the tape machine itself that Zach is working with here. An ambient hissing dysfunction that adds to the mix of four track fuckery that Rowden excels at in leaps and bounds on this. Taking minimal amounts of source material and mining out interactions of incorrect tape responses, slowly fading into silently shuddering loops of degradations to the source material resembling a grey oxide stew with flecks of warbling tape phrases popping up at odd intervals. Rewind function enters the mix eventually, erasing the older information slowly with each repeating cycle of the combined loop phrasing. This is patient, inhuman music deeply tied to the material at hand and a singular vision for building moods that sustain themselves across both sides of this tape.