These six sketches of cyclical sound are quietly mesmerising – a strange ambient cousin of slow-core’s stark sonic palette that lures and lulls and confounds in equal measure.
The information on this mini album is also enjoyably scant: ambient & tape loop experiments. Oakland, California – a press release as minimalist as the music. A series of somnambulant guitar loops fed through an old tape machine – things warble and hum in blurry hypnoses; there are backwards undulations which offer dream-like glimpses into the subconscious, retro-futurist guitar treatments and curious, processed keys that pulse and glow. It’s both oddly alien and strangely human all at once. This is music to allow yourself to drift into another state of being – where textures and vibrations matter. That cyclical nature of the recordings echoes the natural rhythms of breathing, of the waves of a sleeping sea, of the meditative moments at the break of day.
But it isn’t all sun-dappled plain sailing for the soul: aug11, the third track in, adds a new tonal direction where the repeated patterns and phrases almost feel claustrophobic – cheeping like panic-inducing mechanical birds at a deliberately unsettling pace. It’s a subtle but interesting stylistic choice which allows for the mood of this collection to shift in ways that you won’t necessarily expect. It also makes the reduced tempo and subtly treated guitars of aug17 feel like a necessary return to calm.
aug24 is a particular highlight, and, to these ears at least, feels like it’s tied to a disparate and further reaching sea of sonic influences – sounding somehow like a lost musical prediction of the future – all trautonium waver and hum. And I will always have a particular fondness for any song that ends sounding like the cassette player has sunk slowly into deep well water. You can feel yourself going under. Glorious indeed.
There have been many ambient guitar explorations put to tape over the years, but there’s more than enough magic in these soporific, seesawing sonic experiments to repay repeated listens.
Written by M.A Welsh (Misophone)
