Tempo spirals. Sirens sound about a quarter in. Deadpan narration follows, locked in an eery, krautrock zen. “Bury The Lines” is doomed from the start, proudly. Just before impact, it takes a moment to savor the nausea: the engine cuts, the beat suspends, the synth wanders, and then it all comes back in flames.
A self-titled LP from Brooklyn-based duo Eaters is out April 15th on Driftless Recordings / Dull Tools.
A wordless, entrancing little mix entitled The Creation of Greatness can flow in countless directions. There’s a certain charm in going about this one blindly…
Manfred Werder – 2008
Brambles – To Speak Of Solitude
Jana Winderen – Wind Over Old Land
Pausal – Bottom-Up Pause
Harry Escott – Sex Scene
Toshiya Tsunoda – Seashore, Venice Beach, 31 Jul 01
Olan Mill – Pampas (Rurre)
Chris Watson – Valle Dei Venti
Clem Leek – 51°03.773′
Jana Winderen – Sense Of Latent Power
Harry Escott – End Credits
When asked though, Vyvyan Colonna, the artist behind Rome-based project Albino Deers, did provide some additional insight. To summarize: greatness is not only the product of beauty and power, of Greek muses and distant wonder, but also of ordinary darkness, of human misery and loneliness.
The snap of twigs and huff and puff of young lungs stumbling down the winding island trail. A girl leans into the sea-spray, securing her clips against the breeze. Whispering, the water falls, concealing the quartz cave, they trace along the familiar place. They wander for hours, tip-toeing around nests full of eggs, ceasely flicking the specks of pollen floating in the air. Dashing through the Moon Gate, beyond the crystal clearing, to the turquoise fishing holes, to the foreboding fountains of old. Oleander shrubs shimmy/shake it, dishing bouquet high-fives to the uptight stalagmites, left hanging. Those stones aren’t down, too priggish, dismissive. The eucalyptus knows, and boos and hisses.
By the hole, this pool, a sudden fountain. Slurp, the gang ages. Sagging laughter and the comic abundance of crease. Giggle at the new found flubber jiggle. “Look you guys! Look how our skin can wiggle!” Rollicking and splashing in the basin. One boy tips his hat, dips his jaw, and spurts a squirt at chronology. His dentures slip, prehensile tongue flicking them against the clock’s face: sand in the hour glass laughs like a newborn granddad.
____
Noah Klein and Emily Reo are two of our favorite artists, and overall human beings. While the couple’s recording projects have co-existed for years this is actually the first time they’ve come together on a finished piece (mixed/mastered by Miles Coe). Soon they’ll embark on an extended return-to-the-east-coast tour. And friends are welcome to help host it: more details here.
Dreams is an ongoing project where we ask our favorite artists to create a piece of music inspired by a handmade collage.
“Something about True North has always baffled idealists. Tectonic plates established to guide the clearer top layer. Fragments of a desired truth, liberated; landscape untouched by the human condition, no need for compass. An English road pierces the jungle. An African herd grazes at the shore of the North Sea. Finding joy in the randomization of manipulation; the globe was slowly reformed from its pieces. Listen again, and I will not think the same. ‘I’ changes. The compass tilts, constantly.”
The work of Matthew Sage is far from foreign to these pages, both as a subject sonically and as a force guiding its very pen. Years have passed since the Rx fascination, the Starling Murmurations… even the Interior Shadows and the great collapsing of Lux. Truth is we’ve never taken to an artist quite like we have with him. His flux narrative: expansive, unpredictable. Our friendship: complicated, collaborative to the point of bias. Yet Nathaniel and I simply can’t help it: this desire to not only support what he does, but to participate in his process, time and time again.
Along came: A Singular Continent. This floating mass of ideas in various zip-filed stages. Familiar Sage-ian sound—guitars, electronics, samples & field recordings—pushed to uncharted territory. A continuation in one sense, and an outright revelation in another. If there’s a land M. Sage’s music tends to inhibit, it’s certainly one that shifts, that takes comfort in vanishing reality and risk in rumination. Violin, cello, saxophone, synth, iron: all these additions made sense in this new, borderless place.
And sure enough the continent would perpetually split and reform, affixing itself to miscellaneous task. Nathaniel found it embedded deeply within his collage-making. Late nights in the living room, surrounded by black and white cutouts. He’d kept all the scraps from Dreams, and with these recordings decided to assemble a new series at random: the very antithesis to Dreams’ geographic precision, a proportionate inverse to that globe altogether.
Iowa-based poet Grant Souders found it in his writing. He constructed four poems—North, East, South, and West—of abstract observations and surreal conundrums, ones encountered while living in these frequencies.
The three elements now become one deluxe artifact: a 2xLP through Patient Sounds and a 36 page book published by Palaver Press featuring all language and imagery (including one unique, handmade collage in each). The album streams above and the book opens below.
Pre-order is available as of today. Find full details and digital experience here.