Joel Shanahan has made quite the name for himself (Golden Donna, Auscultation, et al) peddling highly abstract and energetic electronica for a while now, but this project under his own Jah-given name is something else entirely and, if I may so myself, his best work to date!
Across 84 minutes, JS covers a TON of ground skirting the ambient electronica subgenres, with nervous drone-swells, competing/asynchronous synth hooks that fall in upon themselves into anti-pulse reverse-cascades, and a remarkably tasteful employment of Basinski/Cortini-an decay peppered throughout.
While a few beats are scattered here & there, the overall feel of this beastly 2xCS is of a consensual haunting, a purposeful study of sci-fi horror in slow-motion, emotionally removed but for the viscous syrup between speakers and recipient earholes. Not party music. Not study music. Definitely melancholy art-makin’ jamz for days, though, & the whole thing sounds great both via headphones and mid-range stereo speakers, making it dynamic to the third power!
The art is also pretty fucking stellar here, with two purty yeller tapes snuggling up in the sleeping bag of a heat-resistant sparkly envelope that’s superglued to two esoteric b/w prints, each kissed with oil-spill-ish accent. Ratskin wasn’t fuckin’ around here ONE BIT!
https://ratskinrecords.bandcamp.com/album/frozen-clock-hovering
and/or
https://goldendonna.bandcamp.com/music
—Jacob An Kittenplan
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