Mark Nelson—the Pan•American,
the only one you’ll ever need to know, and not the failed airline best known
for its synonymity with Lockerbie, Scotland—cut his teeth in ambient rock
outfit Labradford, and if you don’t lurve
yourself some ambient rock classics like I do, you oughta get the fudge out of my living room right now.
Not because I don’t like you – I’m just going to throw on, oh I dunno, A Stable Reference, I guess. I understand
if you’re not in that mood.
Or better yet, let’s hear some new Nelson classics, yes? Nelson started
doing Pan•American as a solo thing in 1997, putting out more ambient stuff. The
discography is rich and gorgeous. And he’s been at it a long time. So when the cassette EP Sketch for Winter II: Rue Corridor popped up on my radar, I was
immediately intrigued as to what this longtime scenester (shut up, everything’s
a scene!) was up to in the present.
Part of Geographic North’s Sketches
for Winter series (which also includes A Sunny Day in Glasgow’s I: New Christmas Classics, Night
Cleaner’s III: Green Sleeves, and
Moon Diagrams’s IV: Care Package)
released solely on cassette, Rue Corridor
is 22 minutes of gleaming audio head candy, which is kind of exactly what
Nelson does best. (That was a long sentence – let’s recast it as “Nelson is
good at making music. This tape is also good.”) Yeah, there’s some seasonality
here, so as the icicles are melting across this great land of ours (Denmark,
duh), remember that when this was released, the New Year was just upon us.
“The Terrace” glimmers across side A in its icicle-y goodness,
refracting sound visibly as particles through prisms and capturing it in
miniature under microscopes. Take a bunch of cold breaths, let them out, and listen to the cloud of condensation
you’ve just expelled. In another universe, this is what everyone listens to
year round, but here it’s probably for winter only (and thus marketed well,
Geographic North!). The title track wiggles like a penguin documentary beneath
an ice shelf, and they’re catching fish and avoiding orcas! It’s a cool world,
under there (*affixes sunglasses to face*). And the synth squall of “Pasqual”
intones approaching night, perhaps for months at a time depending on your
latitude (*affixes sunglasses to face, again, because why not*).
For goodness’ sake, remember Mark
Nelson with this release! And don’t let the impending springtime fool you with
its false sense of hope and happiness. Make it winter all the time, baby, and
stick your head in a hole. Penguins do, and who argues with penguins? (Wait,
that’s ostriches, isn’t it…)
--Ryan Masteller
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