August Traeger has been a sound-sculpting force-to-be-kept-tabs-upon for the better part of the last decade, each of his projects/labels exploring a plethora of electronic niches, making (and breaking) waves in all of them (see also: Bicephalic Records, Somnaphon/Phlimm, Nipple Stools, Secant, et cetera), and this release as Odd Person, is every bit as mesmerizing and transportive as any. Here AT (as OP) curates an eerie, between-the-worlds/alternate dimension amidst tropical rainforest layers’ inhabitants’ songs’ desperations, all flora, fauna, fungi & gaseous molecule a-quaking and trembling in their yearnings for deeper communions between them.
It is through painstakingly nuanced, plaintive* synthscape accompaniments and somehow-non-robotic drum machine sputterings that AT/OP’s field recordings are stirred and syrup-cemented together to form a hallucinatory other realm, its fevered humidity translating to sweat-upon-the-brow and dew-accumulation in the conches of your ear, by the end of the tape. Give this a meditated listen in good headphones and come out the other side slightly shaken, but no worse for the wear.
Ingrown Records may be calling it quits in the next year, but they’re not going down without a blaze of glory!
*when not anxiously overwhelming, that is
and/or
— Jacob An Kittenplan
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