NIGHT FOUNDATION “Let There Be Light” (Flophouse)

 

Miami’s Richard Vergez does the opposite of what you’d expect from Miami, where you’re normally accosted by all the Dolphins teal and … Vice pink and dusk clubbing and coeds and cheap cocktails – perpetual spring break, right? Well, you fools – strap in, because you’re in for the surprise of your lives! Or maybe not, depending on what you expect from something called “Night Foundation,” and also whether or not you even know about the Miami connection, which I did not until I looked it up. Let There Be Light is, in fact, a tour de force of ambient synthesizer explorations, kosmische introspections that illuminate what it means to be you and how you connect to the wider universe. It’s not, decidedly, a place where brain cells go to die.
 
According to Vergez’s Soundcloud page (no Bandcamp?!), what you’ll mostly hear in his work is Arp Odyssey, synth strings, and tape loops, and that’s what Let There Be Light mainly offers. Every motion, every movement is deliberate, languidly paced, hints of melody and rhythm peeking through the gloom. Because that’s what we’re doing here – we’re moving from darkness to light, from night to day, from inner to outer, but just barely. Night Foundation holds the noir atmosphere throughout, even when the final strains threaten dawn. There’s probably something there to latch on to, to feel good about, but not until those first tentative steps are taken out from behind the nocturnal curtain. Even if in the end we end up retreating back to the darkness, we’re at least trying something new here, right? And that’s always a good thing – no pink or teal or whatever to mess with the melancholy.
 
https://soundcloud.com/night_foundation
 
https://flop-house.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

RAY MONDE & J. NOVICK “Ray Monde & J. Novick” C30 (Flophouse)

 

I don’t think we should be flippant about Ray Monde and J. Novick’s work, do you? I think we treat it with the reverence it deserves, with the reverence with which it was made. It sounds reverent too – Novick’s synthesizer beds, thick with mood, allow for Monde to add his restrained sax to build and release tension through exquisitely built glacial chord progressions, field recordings adding flavor here and there where necessary. But then you look at the track titles and notice that the transcendent track 3 is titled “New Age Shit,” you wonder whether you’ve struck a true modus operandi or a jest tossed off by two musicians frustrated with the response to their work.
 
We walk the edge of a knife here.
 
But let’s regroup firmly on the serious side and just sink into this fever dream that Monde and Novick have conjured from realms beyond ours. No, this is no “New Age Shit,” this is the removal of the veil, the parting of the curtains, the deep dive into elemental existence. It’s like purple antimatter ripples as envisioned by a time-unstuck Angelo Badalamenti, but backward sometimes and slathered in more reverb. The overwhelming interstellar-ness of the cavernous production places you right in the middle of the void, the action blurred at the edges of your perception the only action occurring and the only action worth focusing on. As the tape comes for you – and it will come for us all – it will assimilate your humming atoms into its own massively buzzing energy field, and all will be right in the end.
 
Also released on Russia’s Invisible Animals.
 
https://flop-house.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

FLETCHER PRATT “Rituals for Magnetic Tape Vol. II” C60 (Flophouse)

 

When I think of “ritual,” I think of something that happens beyond the everyday, something that’s set aside and sacralized for a specific purpose, whether that something is spiritual or religious or not. Could just be a ceremonial type thing, something you set out to perform while focusing intently on the steps, revering each moment. Could be conjuring demons in the woods. The possibilities are literally endless.
 
When Fletcher Pratt tackles a ritual practice, he does it with a Nagra IV-S tape recorder, on which “all sounds [were] recorded and processed.” Talk about focus! His medium is magnetic tape, and he hunkers down with it, cradling it like a precious heirloom, ready to turn what’s on it into a paean to the ever-loving cosmos that it came from. Maybe that’s what he thinks when he’s working, “ritualizing,” or maybe not, but in the end the result is the same: the sounds come via a carefully crafted process that’s hopefully repeatable. Given that this is volume II, that seems to be the case.
 
The tape squirts and spits as it reels around the Nagra, also shimmering and crackling and twinkling and chirping. It’s the sonic equivalent of the natural world, all in motion all the time, a complex system of physics and matter. And even if Fletcher Pratt doesn’t decide to don a cloak and perform secretly in the middle of a forest, it wouldn’t be the most outlandish thing to picture if he did. In fact, Rituals for Magnetic Tape Vol. II is its own shrine to its own self, with fragrant organic incense the only thing getting sacrificed to it. Mellow out and descend!
 
https://fletcherpratt.bandcamp.com/
 
https://flop-house.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

PUBERTY “THTG” C30 (Flophouse)

You’ve seen the disclaimer, “No X was harmed in the making of this Y”, right? Said sentiment does not apply here. 

Puberty (the looping/musique concrète/further-looping/wall-of-sound-collage project; not the hormonal affliction) seeks to harm the very sanctity of pure tones henceforth by overshadowing any and all proffered tonal strains, by pluck or by swell, with a double-dose of ever-permutating rhythmic inflection, be those textures wrought via hyper-warble/glitch/tremolo/decay, or static-possession.

Via eyes-closed deep-listening, “THTG" is truly mesmerizing and otherwordly; peripherally, it almost plays like a disoriented, rebellious beat-tape that can’t find it’s own keys. Win-win here.

Not uplifting, but certainly high-minded, Flophouse puts out another great art-making/meditative tape to help one Get in the Flow of focus and/or escape.

https://flop-house.bandcamp.com/album/thtg

—Jacob An Kittenplan

JOSHUA AARON “Thick Skin Vol. 1” C40 (Flophouse)

You need thick skin if you’re going to do this. You can’t have people like me – “critics” – harshing the buzz of creativity and bringing you down before you even have a chance to get going. So Joshua Aaron is ready for me – he’s pretty much ready for anything on his Flophouse debut, Thick Skin Vol. 1. Does he need to be? Probably not. I’m in a pretty good mood, so I’m feeling pretty generous about the words I’m going to dole out to him. Plus his tape is a solid blast throughout.

Each side contains a 20-minute sculpture, synths and samples processed to a darkly psychedelic extreme, like a black-on-black lava lamp in the throes of demise by cheese grater. Each manic session captures Aaron at peak paranoia, his wordless voice a chanted OM conjuring magical defense. I’m white-knuckling it even in the more subdued passages, because I know there’s a tension that’s bound to arise at any moment, and it invariably does. But the ride is the key feature here, and there’s no telling where Thick Skin is going to go at any time. You just gotta be ready for whatever comes.

https://joshuaaaron.bandcamp.com/

https://flop-house.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

CLOUD DWELLER “Eschatology” C35 (Flophouse)

Strong Basinski-meets-Slint vibes permeate “Eschatology”, with decaying-as-loops-pass electric guitar pluckerings melding and molding into blown-out swells and fleeting drones, some pushed-past-capacity textures interfering amelodiously at edge-o-yr-seat intervals, too! 

Too dismal to set as the backdrop to any ambitious, sunny afternoon, Cloud Dweller’s output is perhaps best taken in via deep listening, at the pre-cusp of sleep; maybe they’re the perfect half-nap companion, as their pseudo-soporific (read “glacial”) pace & tone won’t lend itself too readily to pacification, but without a doubt, doth proffer hypnotism and a serious mental meandering or two.

Headphones not necessary, but highly recommended!

https://flop-house.bandcamp.com/album/eschatology

and/or

https://clouddweller.bandcamp.com/releases

—Jacob An Kittenplan

SAINT HEWITT “Pitted Wizard” C27 (Flophouse)

In Christopher Moore’s “Secondhand Souls”, the Golden Gate Bridge is bathed not only in ever-lasting fog, but a wispy slurry of agitated spirits who’ve been relegated to circling the rust-colored scaffolding and nets ever since having successfully shrugged off their mortal coils. 

Saint Hewitt’s “Pitted Wizard” should serve as a brilliant accompaniment to reading this novel, its own wind-battered beat-joists clanking sharply in shock, only to fade into the abyssal, heavy atmosphere of woozy, droning synth-lurches and warbly, haunting semi-melodies, swallowed whole and ingested by the night. 

Half blurry beat-tape, half fuzzy ambiance-amplifier, this half-hour ride makes repeated listens an easy habit to fall into. &Get a load of the fabulous, Windy Weber-esque paint job on this tape, too; Michigan’s Flophouse label knows how to make a good-lookin’ relic, for sure!

https://flop-house.bandcamp.com/album/pitted-wizard

—Jacob An Kittenplan