Stadiums & Shrines

The backyard seemed twisted that night, as if viewed through an uneven pane; not quite sure where the ivy began and the trees ended, maybe it wasn’t real, maybe it was the scotch, maybe it was the glass of ice cubes left on the windowsill…

Inspired by a light fixture exhibit last fall, Fort Collins-based artist Matthew Sage made Music For Interior Shadows, his way of interpreting absent space through the distant extraction and rearrangement of old records. The result was an eerily replayable collection of ambient, era-bent material. It also framed an interesting relationship between Sage and the subtlety of objects, one that almost demanded further exploration. And fortunately, now comes another study, similar in tone, different in execution. Music For Cubist Guitar originated from watching a documentary on the 20th century art movement pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque known as Cubism. Sage was drawn to the idea of depicting subjects from a multitude of perspectives, by literally breaking the plane, and reforming its matter in a more abstract (and dynamic) context. The object became his own guitar-centric folk, which he then shattered and stretched across time, turning ordinary chords into serene, crystallized wavelengths of sound. The arresting sequence is streaming in its entirety below:

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Get it all in a zip over at Patient Sounds.

Somewhere back in that predawn blackness, is a voice patiently making its way through a window, past a courtyard, and out to sea:

Sunny Dunes | Patience (Waiting For The Summer)
Sunny Dunes | Go Go

The operatic sense of familiarity going on here is thanks to a lift from “Una voce poco fa”, the 18th century aria famously attempted by the wife of Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane. And the hums of “Go Go” (I’ve been updated) are from a scene in this 1969 Japanese film, interesting. French producer Kira Perov aka Sunny Dunes has a way with atmosphere, and a number of astral-minded releases at bandcamp.

Each piece of Elijah Holden’s EP “was composed in seeking to reveal a moment when a shift in consciousness occurs”. The two below follow a light all the way from ocean’s edge to outer space, as birds guide a current in, and ground control counts Apollo 17 down:

Elijah Holden | Lighthouse
Elijah Holden | XVII

The Chicago-based artist (who also plays in the Julian Lynch live ensemble and the band Conductive Alliance) has the rest of 33 Spokes at soundcloud, which includes “a Kubu shaman’s incantation… a Pentecostal minister inciting his congregation to speak in tongues… Robert Oppenheimer (‘father of the atomic bomb’) reflecting upon seeing the first test nuclear explosion.” He plans to self-release it physically in April.

It’s almost 6PM here, and it’s not impossible to be somewhere else:

The glistening synth and guitar work of FWY! is able to blur direct reference points into something less literal yet more suggestive, experiential, and unique than most tributes to the California coast or driving in general—this isn’t music for cruising, or surf town life-styling, as much as it is music to imagine the sensations and slow-motion scenery attached to doing such things. That means no car or coast required (though having lived there, “Corona Del Mar” flashbacks do come compliment quite well). Get all 42 minutes of San Clemente inside a cassette with rad construction paper artwork, through Moon Glyph.