LEAAVES “12 Worlds” (Strategic Tape Reserve)

 

Nate Wagner is no stranger to the contemplative. Over scores (scores, I say! Well, several, anyway) of releases, Wagner as Leaaves has dived headfirst into many an ambient deep end, whether using synthesizers or guitars or samples, and he has always emerged from his immersive excursions with enough material to drag us along with him, back into it all. He’s even made an off-the-wall Terry Crews–sampling left turn! That one was wild.

 

On 12 Worlds, though, Wagner is back to the ambient stuff, drawing on field recordings that came to him from some of his cohorts, and with them in hand, he spins hypnagogic dreamscapes that swirl and dissipate. There’s always a sense of place within the Leaaves oeuvre, and here it’s where you are, your present, yet overlaid with secret realities that aren’t often observed. Fortunately, via delicate playing that intertwines with the found sound, Wagner helps to remove the veil from these secret worlds and allows them to interact with the one you’re used to. It’s a neat trick.

 

So you can let it all fade into your headphones (you’ll need headphones) as the overlapped worlds of your particular place encroach and intermingle. The sounds flow like inhalations, exhalations, processes of connecting with the molecules around you. I bet you just never knew so many things were there at once, such incredible invisible oddities.

 

https://leaaves.bandcamp.com/

 

https://strategictapereserve.bandcamp.com/

 

--Ryan

NEW BATCH: TYMBAL TAPES

Oh, have we got some goodies for you today, kids. Just in time for your pre-Harvest stockup comes an Autumn cornucopia of sonic wonderment from our friends over at Tymbal Tapes. Label honcho Scott Scholtz has three of his thumbs in as many delicious pies, and he’s served them up hot and delicious for your autumn enjoyment. Come for the promise of wonderful music, stay for the swell artwork by Tiny Little Hammers and a bunch of unrelated metaphors.

VALLE DE GALGOS – “EL DOMO SPITZERWELT” C30

Drone at me, little synthesizer, and I will be enthralled until your sound ends. Valle De Galgos do more than that of course – harmonium is a key ingredient, as are field recordings and … voice? – but the building blocks are irrelevant once you’re in the middle of it all. The project, a newly formed duo consisting of Argentine sound artists Atilio Sanchez and Pablo Picco, hit all the philosophical touchpoints you’d ever want in an ambient release. Buildings? Check. The sea? Check. Geometrical shapes? Check. Outer space transmissions? Check. Inner voices? Check. Ghost dimensions? Check. Anything else? Check, but you have to let your imagination run with it. Mine went to what I know about Patagonia (which is very little, sadly) and conjured rocky shores at the southernmost tip, where you’re just a hop, skip, and a journey stowed away on an icebreaker from Antarctica. Fitting that seabirds make an appearance on “En camino a Calera”? Probably. It helped with my visualizations anyway. Regardless, once the initial chord of “Florence Westfalia / Tierra de Nilivilves” began to stretch and the harmonies began to augment it, I was hooked, even when it decayed into static. Guide me, little synthesizer (and other stuff). Guide me.

LEAAVES – “WOW THIS BEARD IS REALLY GREAT (I’M GLAD I GREW IT)” C20

I had the idea to just make the review of this tape a laughy emoji, but then I asked myself, what am I, some Pitchfork staff jagoff from 2002? I most certainly am not. I do, however, get a chuckle whenever I see Terry Crews’s face – that dude is so self-aware, it’s amazing. And when I read the description of “Wow This Beard,” I nearly doubled over in an intense guffaw. “Wow This Beard” is a plunderphonic exercise whereby normally reliably ambient maestro Nate Wagner sliced apart a bunch of Old Spice commercials featuring Crews and recombined them into a fairly coherent vaporwave approximation. And as you might imagine, the tape smells really dang good! I always found the Crews commercials pretty entertaining, and that’s coming from someone who barely has a second to become immersed in television anymore (a very good thing, I think). So maybe it’s no surprise then that Wagner succeeds in applying his keen critical ear to commercialized product and dissecting it before us to reveal the deep, dark underbelly of the marketplace. Is it weird, then, that I’m also constantly reminded of Crews’s role as the president in Idiocracy? Does “Wow This Beard” provide commentary on the realization that I’d prefer Crews’s fictional president to our current one? Let’s answer that question together as we listen, shall we?

SOMNOROASE PĂSĂRELE – “ESSEN” C40

Romanian artist Somnoroase Păsărele is no stranger to the Tymbal world, having released “GAMA” on the label waaaay back at the tail end of 2015. He returns triumphant with “ESSEN,” an electronic masterpiece that is at once difficult to scrutinize and easy on the ear – that is, if you like your synthesizer properly kosmische’d and dissonant. Hey, turns out I do, so as this thing plays out, I’m falling more deeply in love with it as each minute passes. Păsărele does not let up on the tension one iota, and so “ESSEN” is an edge-of-your-seat nailbiter that reflects his home country’s rocky history and the divide between East and West. “ESSEN” sounds like it could have emerged from the Berlin electronic underground, and I wouldn’t blame you if that was your initial impression, but the communist stormclouds that once gathered to the east, at least until 1989 and the fall of Ceauşescu, are still deeply felt. Maybe that’s me reading into it, or maybe it’s because I just literally read a book on gender in Romania. Either way, “ESSEN” is fascinating, and your attention to it must be undivided.

Tymbal Tapes

Valle De Galgos

Leaaves

Somnoroase Păsărele

--Ryan Masteller

LEAAVES “Be Mindful” C32 (ERR REC)

When a release entitled Be Mindful features promo text like, “Those pieces all come from a place of deep contentment, an emotion which is fleeting and easily forgotten,” you should know what you’re getting yourself into. Sure enough, ambient drifter Nate Wagner, aka Leaaves, pretty much met his perfect match in Paris-based tape label ERR REC, and the partnership resulted in eight tracks of sublime beauty that make you think, feel, and remember. That’s nostalgia – that’s what’s tapped in your brain when you turn on a Leaaves release and the music hits whatever cortex or lobe in your brain is responsible for the shimmery feels. ERR REC commissioned a heck of a graphic artist with this release (and others) as well: Bolanile Maté (related to label head Gilles Maté?) / Be Better Paris, whose white geometry on a green background and sans serif lettering underscores the simple/complex dichotomy of the entire release. Emotionally stirring while deceptively simple, the tracks are weightless and gripping in equal measure. Wagner himself is in fine form – he recorded Be Mindful on a trip to the continent, in Magny-Les-Hameaux – stretching his compositions and inhabiting them, imbuing them with his own memories and blissfully recreating moments that we’ve all had at one time or another. That’s the secret to ambient releases like Be Mindful – they have a universality that we can all relate to. Leaaves just happens to release some of the nicer and more tranquil entries into the overall canon, and this is no different.

ERR REC

Leaaves

--Ryan Masteller

LEAAVES “Sunwheel / Submersible Sailboat” C39 (Midnight Moon Tapes)

I don’t know what makes Sunwheel / Submersible Sailboat such an outdoor recording, but that’s where it takes me, right out the sliding glass door, off the porch threshold, feet into the grass and off toward the woods, or maybe to a clearing or by a lake. I find myself squinting into the sunbeams of Leaaves’s music, overwhelmed by the glare and shielding my eyes as best I can with an outstretched arm. Then the feeling is amplified until my body can’t take it anymore, and the effect disintegrates back into the wash of sound.

The two lengthy pieces that comprise this tape were recorded in various places, resulting in this “mixtape of soundscapes.” And the release does indeed act like a mixtape, as there are several “movements” to each piece, some of which end abruptly while others flow into the next gently and organically. As such, the tape plays like a “greatest hits” of ambient/drone’s textures and headspaces or a primer for experimental found-sound manipulation. At any rate, it’s eminently enjoyable. Just ask me, the dude who wandered into his Florida backyard in bare feet with this on his headphones, totally oblivious to any of the myriad flora and fauna just begging to kill you at the first chance. The winner of the competition? Fire ants! My poor, poor feet.

Leaaves is Nate Wagner of Durham, North Carolina, and he’s got a nifty backlist of titles on his Bandcamp page. I suggest you start digging into it.

Midnight Moon Tapes

Leaaves Bandcamp page

--Ryan Masteller