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This is a beautiful ambient/experimental album that seamlessly combines reverby guitar ambient, tape loops a la Celer and William Basinski, and field recordings/found sounds.
The music itself is lovely, though perhaps not extremely unique or groundbreaking. Though the tracks are fairly long, they all contain interesting progression and remain engaging.
The thematic centerpieces of this album are the two tracks containing portions of a heated conversation between police and someone who seems to be on the run in a stolen car. Of course, throughout the album are scattered various field recordings of trains, insects swarming, children playing, radio snippets etc. But while these latter elements can fade into the background and simply become part of the ambience, the car chase recordings are loud and heartbreakingly frantic. I often turn to ambient music in order to drift off into a transcendent, musical atmosphere for a time, but there’s something directly counter to that contained in these dramatic recordings. Something reminding me that even at my most peaceful times of withdrawal from mundane daily life, there is some chaotic, frantic, painful, dark drama going on somewhere in the world. I don’t believe it is possible to experience both elements simultaneously, but music like this at least gestures at the necessity of trying.
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Hey man, thank you so much for the review. I really appreciate that you have taken the time to listen to this album. I also love seeing comparisons to Celer and Basiniski, those are certainly some of the heavy-weight influences that I'm sure I pull from (even subconsciously sometimes) because I listen to them so often.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
No problem! I love the music a lot.
I haven't paid as much attention to the previous two albums, but it seems like on this one the ambient soundscapes are a lot more developed, like on Almost Deleted and the outro of Mediocre Man. Those are two parts that really reminded me of Celer. Did you use actual tape loops for stuff like that?
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Yep! They are actual tape loops. I've tried to eliminate as much of the computer workspace as possible. If I have an ambient sample I want to allow to swell, I just make a tape loop and load it through a patch in my Organelle and let it go. I've found a decent reel-to-reel at the local antique store, a courtroom dictation machine that allows me to manually slow and speed up tapes, and then I like to run it into my computer through another Tascam Portastudio, so some of these samples saw three different tapes before they reached their destination lol.
Celer has been a massive influence for me this year, and my goal has been to make increasingly ambient work. It's hard to stay committed to that sometimes though when I want to write lyrics lol.
I may split up my work and release solely ambient work and then shoot for folk-ish stuff under a different name at some point.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
That's so cool.
I don't know, I personally really enjoy the way you combine the two. Mediocre Man is probably one of my favorites of your songs, I love hearing those vague, abstract loops paired with the concrete emotions of your vocals and lyrics. There's of course tons of stuff in this style I haven't listened to, but I've never really heard a combination like that before.
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Thanks again man, I really appreciate it. I feel that Mediocre Man is my favorite as well, it's very personal to me. Becoming a father has been one of the weirdest and most profound changes in my life. In a way it's been harder to write music now because my life is good and things are good. I tend to produce more music when I'm in a rough patch. Yet, having a kid now opened up this really crushing realization to me that I will never be enough for what my son deserves no matter how hard I try. It's a weird dichotomy but it's really changed my approach to writing music.
I'll likely just continue combining the two because it is a fun challenge. I'm on COVID quarantine right now, so I've been writing more music again. I still have around an hour of unreleased music that didn't make it onto this album, so I may put out another shortly.
Again, I always appreciate the kind words.
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adorable thread
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