MARGRAFF & YANTIS “Ohne Eile” (Patient Sounds)

Rene Margraff and Cody Yantis, from Berlin and Colorado respectively, converse in tactile ambience across continents. Their collaboration is a showcase of inspiration, a highlight reel of electroacoustic dabbling and intense introspection. The presence of the two experimentalists weighs heavily on Ohne Eile (“Without Hurry”), and they certainly nehmen sich Zeit in the process of composition.

The idea here is to revel in the development of these sounds, the origination of these pieces; to treat the very act of creation with reverence and to scrutinize each individual elemental building block. That’s what Margraff and Yantis do so well: they treat each component as a separate item to be tweaked, pored over. They move slowly and deliberately. They engage with the minute and the miniature.

https://soundcloud.com/pillowdiver

https://cyantis.bandcamp.com/

https://patientsounds.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

REGARDING THE MUSIC OF OTHERS “Shank Williams” (Patient Sounds)

“Shank Williams” vs. “Shank Trilliams,” j-card vs. tape, we know who wins: Trilliams. It’s just cooler.

Brandon Eckes straps on his six-shooters, dons his ten-gallon hat, and shines up his spurs for a jaunty plunderphonic adventure, and I have no idea where the western references come from. Maybe because “Shank Trilliams” sounds like an outlaw from an old film, maybe because the samples sound like outlaws from an old film, I don’t know! What I do know is that Eckes is able to have a lot of fun with whatever sources he’s tapping, and they all sound like they’re incidental music from old films from the Golden Age of Hollywood, if ever such a thing existed.

Eckes knows it did, and so he’s brought the vibe to the masses. Scratchy like old 45s, the source material flits by in both nostalgic and newfangled aesthetics, scratching both the oddly familiar and the sneakily experimental itch. Eckes regards the music of others (ahem) as his own personal playground, and we should thank him for it. “Shank Trilliams” is an invigorating blast of weird sonics, lovingly curated and expressed with an ear for sheer wit. Excellent work.

https://patientsounds.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

NADIR BLISS “Everything but Everything” (Patient Sounds)

Glowing faintly at the bottom of his luck, Sean O’hara home records (in Mississippi, of all places) as Nadir Bliss, a bedroom project flecked with dust and the space of rooms. Laying his tracks to tape apparently held together by scotch tape and glue and paper clips and stuff, O’hara emits homespun charm at every turn, in every second. What didn’t make the cut to “Everything but Everything”? Potentially nothing, as this scrapbook of fragile emotion crinkles and crackles as pages turn, crumbling at the weight of human touch.

On the brink of the season, this makes great incidental music for a sad summer. Teenagers wallowing in contemplation and uncertainty need this to accompany their thoughts. You might be surprised how many of them would rather listen to this than burst out of their skins while spinning some aggressive rhythmic nonsense. Catharsis is overrated. Let the weird feelings simmer.

Oh, wait, you’re taking my word for it on what teenagers are thinking? Ha! That’s a bad idea. I’m just projecting me now onto my stupid idiot teenage self and wishing I had the emotional depth required to understand, let alone make, “Everything but Everything.” I wouldn’t have had the patience.

Although I wish I did.

This song cycle spans twenty-seven short tracks, each one a fabric square in a patchwork sound document that’s beautiful in its completion. Ramshackle, frayed, but beautiful.

https://nadirbliss.bandcamp.com/

https://patientsounds.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

SHANK TRILLIAMS “Regarding the Music of Others” C20 (Patient Sounds)

Chicago’s badazz Patient Sounds imprint has done a serious solid for all the stale hawnkeetawnk watering holes out there, re-birthing SHANK TRILLIAMS! 

This 20 minute sound collage finds ol’ Hank Senior’s tone & mood dramatically unsmoothified, & outright angularized, his renowned, graceful swagger and slide-licks junkstapausingly glitchified and appropriated for some seriously beatitudinal blissing-outs! Sans vocals, this release will either prove (at low volume) a sleepy set up, or (at high volume) a str8 up dance-floor masher. 

“Regarding the Music of Others” is proof-in-le-pudding that electronic music can breathe new life into well-beaten paths!

https://patientsounds.bandcamp.com/album/ps108-regarding-the-music-of-others-shank-trilliams

— Jacob An Kittenplan

PETER KRIS “Dutch Flat” (Patient Sounds)

A solo outing for the German Army player, DUTCH FLAT flaps its haggard wings way atop the penthouse suites overlooking man-made ponds and estuaries. Opener, “Four-walled mural” stretches out coily guitar strings like laffy taffy over the face imitating a dumb mustache. Electron microscopes have been used on these textures and have found traces of paramecium playing connect the dots. In the opaque blend there is movement, a catfish-leprechaun dancing 12 frames per second.

The title track glides in on a syrupy paper plate betwixt the ionosphere and the mesosphere and spirals precariously through cloudy storms. “Hinterlands” has a layer with a slow grind of ice and iron. “Miwok” says something like, well I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk, in native Miwok.

My reference point listening to Peter Kris’s record is Neil Young’s live-recorded soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch’s film, DEAD MAN. It leads me to consider the environments and activities surrounding the making of DUTCH FLAT. His guitar measures the space and renders a panoramic sound document.

PS093

Dutch Flat Cassette


--Adam Padavano