This is sort of a surprise coming from a Real Life Rock & Roll Band
member, but maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by anything anymore, I dunno. Cumberland County is three longform
experimental pieces that Aaron Oppenheim recorded and then ran through software
that turned the source material into a mosaic of pixilated sounds, fragments
upon fragments of data input and then spit back out into an unrecognizable and
fascinating whole. According to Oppenheim, Cumberland
County stands as “a tribute of sorts to … Windham Hill … and their
particular strain of New Age music.” It’s certainly a head trip through esoteric
landscapes.
The three pieces each have a distinct flavor to them. “September Seas”
runs piano compositions through software until its unrecognizable in its
original form, but over the course of its ten minutes becomes a new, hybrid
entity that wouldn’t sound out of place in the Orange Milk catalog. “Many More”
starts along as a high-pitched, cut-up digital blitz, until it coalesces into a
surprising ambient drone. “Brick by Brick” is a twenty-minute evolution of
acoustic guitar work mulched by a “Sanyo TRC 9010 cassette transcriber,” which
loops and layers and distorts the guitar into strange, alien alignments that
nevertheless whirl in enchantment until they, again surprisingly, sputter out
at the end.
No rock, no roll here. Just a fantastic entry into the Full Spectrum
catalog, and one that’ll have me coming back to Aaron Oppenheim’s work in the
future.
Posts
