Music Re/View 2

All Photo-Manipulations: October 2018

Im super excited// The lights are off. It's almost midnight. I've been drinking a little too much// When every aspect of EDM or pop music is so harmonically saturated now/ I immediately assume I must have drunk more than I should or that I’m tired or something// I'm increasingly less cynical and bitchy but I won't hold back calling out stuff as overhyped or overrated when/ grief is here and it is playing its ugly game// This is ominous and mystical/ but I get short-circuited// As a gatekeeper i'm a lot happier when/ strings are stretched to breaking point/ then i can enjoy a drink in the tavern.

Grief twists and stabs you//

Dissolving like sodium/

between its glitches

This is music as a capsule to absorb yourself within for days on end// Leaving the house and meeting people and doing things in space means a lot, and/ I didn’t go Buddhist// It was kind of the opposite of what I was doing// The music glows like a halogen, offering a wink of light and nothing more; refusing to offer more// It can be a bunch of things— it can be pauses, it can be related to velocity/ it’s a dragon/ it’s like/ some kind of weird, Pink-Floyd-in-Pompeii style recording” — but/ the strategics are so transparent.

On certain angles/

by yawning really loudly/

I think of silence

‘This album is about these eight things// Creaky old doors and rattling sheet metals/ double-reeded aerophones/ lacquered masks and deerskin shoes/ a shibboleth for the aristocracy/ then Stupor/ - then the letting go/ of famous enormous explosions/ altered through the use of subtle noise// The outcome is wildly impactful /even if/ it is molasses-paced, agonizing, and wounded// It is intensely affecting drone-style music/ which – to me - sounds like some beautiful primordial pain draining from a crack in the earth//  While synthesizers dominate as often as reed instruments/ static and sub-bass rumbles open up around slow-moving notes and chords, like fissures/ across which a lacey cloak of accessibility slowly settles// I imagine all his live orchestral takes actually going terribly/ but the overall sound is more crepuscular than crushing, like mists descending on a valley at dusk.

A subject well mined/

seems super non-pretentious//

You can’t control it

Though the genre's French pioneers loved to play with/ a reliable pet/ does that inherently mean it has teeth now? I’m not sure// Existence isn’t symmetrical// The result is a hybrid aesthetic that recalls/ psychedelic American minimalism/ but stripped of its usual elegant carriage and macerated to sludge// He’s remained a benchmark in his genre for quite some time now// His coronation came floating in on the fog of his very specific type of electronica/ - one probably rooted in biology and definitely beaten to death in undergraduate English courses// He was at moogfest shitting on the hype of hardware/ and a whole conversation deserves to be had about his interest in getting other people — and places — involved in the process.

The textures you use/

Sir, you need to pay for those//

I dont give a damn

“The intonation’s off, everything’s strange,” he explains// “I was reading these two painters in conversation recently, talking about/ the way layers fade in and out, and extraneous knocks and clatters suddenly appear from nowhere/ and we just kept playing over things in an iterative way// The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like you know, this is a bit crystallized// There was very little advice or direction given”// Every time I listen to him, though/ he's all out of the box// I just start clapping and crying/ to prevent any electrical infetterence// I would go from new to old, others would do it the other way around// You’ll be one of two people I’ll probably talk to about it.

Swaying on my feet/

even in ongoing anguish//

Part fear, part pleasure