PULSE EMITTER “Through the Portal” (Phinery)

Through the Portal begins as a dystopian masterpiece and ends as a three-dimensional polygonal masterpiece, the use of “masterpiece” twice (and now three times) being the main point of reference for any potential listeners out there. Pulse Emitter, aka Daryl Groetsch, is essentially a national treasure, having released a literal ton of music since 2004 – seriously, if you placed all the cassettes and all the vinyl ever pressed on an industrial scale, you’d probably get close to a ton. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but I’m not exaggerating when I say that entering this portal, passing through this portal, and emerging on the other side of this portal is an experience that will transform your life in real and magnificent ways. Or it will, at least, make you feel better about yourself for a while. In either case, Through the Portal is a continuation of the Portland (OR) musician’s modular synthesizer excursions, the pieces at once melodic and ruminative, easily absorbed in the background or engaged with full throttle at the fore of your focus. Actually, it’s probably best to tackle this stuff up front, as it’s masterfully crafted and worthy of the stranglehold it puts on your attention. In fact, once you enter Portalandia, you may never return from Portalandia. Get it? Portal-landia. Because he’s from Portland and there’s that show. (I amaze myself sometimes. Does that say “amaze”? I meant “amuse.” Sort of.) And while Groetsch is perfectly capable of churning out release upon release reflecting his own interior within his own style, there are hints toward other purveyors of similarly trailblazingly tranquil and/or illuminating vibes. “Teal Forest Droplets” recalls prime Ferraro, while “Heat Haze” could be a Badalamenti update for the forthcoming new season of Twin Peaks. But all of this occurs in Pulse Emitter’s world, and it’s his rules that we’re playing by here. I urge you, then, to strap in, because, take it from me, you are powerless to resist the excellentity and magnifitude. In fact, as you stare with wondering eyes at Through the Portal on Phinery’s Bandcamp page, that little voice you hear is not in your head – it’s real. “Buy me!” says Pulse Emitter’s Through the Portal, nestled snugly within its link, ready for your Paypal credentials. You’re powerless against it. Your wallet opens. Your money is set free.

Pulse Emitter

Phinery

--Ryan Masteller

DINO SPILUTTINI “I Do Not Want What Heaven Gave Me” (Phinery)

I don’t want it either. And what is “it,” exactly? Is “it” some sort of divine blessing, or a message, or a power? How am I supposed to use “it”? Dino Spiluttini doesn’t want “it.” And yet, I think he yearns for something “other” from a supernatural source, something more real and tangible than what we experience in our fast-food religious culture, with its manufactured praise bands (triple yuck!). That’s how it is in America, anyway. I don’t know how it is in Vienna, where Spiluttini is from. Still, the seven songs that comprise I Do Not Want all point to the past and unearth complex emotions about love and loss, life and death. The permanence of history, of time, the passing into the future, or beyond life. They read like a hymnal: “Praise,” “Psalm,” “Chant,” “Requiem,” “Hymn,” “Prayer,” “Mass.” Indeed, Spiluttini was inspired to compose these pieces after his mother showed “him the place where their ashes would be interred after their deaths.” The music was culled “hours of organ recordings from that very church,” adorned with additional piano, and unleashed unto us. As he copes with mortality, he allows us to read into his work the importance – how important depends on the individual – of cultural history and how much it impacts personal history. But then, what do we do we do with that? How do we process an “it” or an “other,” clearly something being grappled with in this music? Even if we can’t come to terms with “it” ourselves, we can use art like this to turn our magnifying glasses outward, to see what’s happening out there in the world today, to react to policies and actions that do not allow all people the luxury of introspection or personal history. We are leaving old legacies behind us, beginning new ones. When we’re ready for reverence, though, we’ll call on Dino Spiluttini.

Dino Spiluttini

Phinery

--Ryan Masteller

PHILIPPE LAMY AND MONOLOGUE “Blu Deux” (Phinery)

These electronics, am I right? Seemingly unending possibilities. Never know what you’re going to get out of them. That’s sort of the best part, though, isn’t it? Always the potential for surprise! Even more interesting, then, when you can get inside the machine, see what’s happening under the hood. That’s where Blu Deux comes in. It’s a concoction, an experiment, a constellation of sonic manufacture that begs intense scrutiny. Sound artists Philippe Lamy and Maria Rose Sarri (aka MonoLogue, aka Marie Rose, aka Moon RA) stretch the concept of “partnership” to a weirdly logical destination, one where their collective minds can tap the subatomic structures of sonic waveforms. I don’t even know what that means, the words are just issuing from the electrical impulses in my own brain. And that’s sort of what “Blue Two” (in English, sort of, not sure why that’s important to you) is, the product of electrical impulses from two brains, captured by audio software and manipulated into finished products. Patterns are fleeting – these tracks are explorations of the rabbit holes down which sounds can travel, and Lamy and Sarri are both adept navigators of these metaphorical tunnels. They barely bounce off the walls! That’s saying something – these are pretty narrow spaces. Anyway, the seemingly unending possibilities of electronics must be contained at points within a finite space, and there’s only so much magnetic tape within a plastic cassette shell, so Blu Deux has to unfortunately begin and end. There’s no infinite cycle to hitch a ride to or echo chamber to report back. No matter how hard Lamy and Sarri try, they are bound by the limits of time and space, of physics. At least we get a snapshot, a slice of time, to reveal what they’re capable of. 

Phinery

Philippe Lamy

MonoLogue

--Ryan Masteller

GERMAN ARMY "Mountain City" (Phinery)

German Army is a household name in the experimental music community die to their extremely prolific activity (under many project names besides GeAr) and knack for creating impressively cohesive albums based on audio concepts.

Mountain City, released on Phinery, is no different. This is a journey into a world: a bustling barter marketplace, a tribal and rural population, clay, wooden and stone homes jutting from the mountainscape.

Snapshots and vignettes of twanging guitars, lively chants, dusty percussion, ragtime and human atmospheres give this album an atmosphere unlike any other. It is extremely human but also contains a mysticism of a fantasized location from the GeAr camp.

Track titles like Bluff, Pea Patch, Sea Island, Frogmore and others give a further focus on the locations real or imagined for each piece on the album.

LIYL: Q///Q, Peter Kris, Dylan Golden Aycock

https://phinery.bandcamp.com/album/mountain-city

-- Joseph Morris

JACOB KIERKEGAARD “Munk” C90 (Phinery)

Munk’s ninety minutes consist of field-recorded Buddhist chants and the ambient spaces where these practices occurred. Sound artist Jacob Kierkegaard spent time in Thailand in 2007, and this cassette functions as an aural document of the people and culture he encountered. Kierkegaard loops these recordings, manipulating them as needed but allowing the natural beauty of the ritualistic mantras to stand almost solely on their own. The result is as mysterious as it is magical, a transportational device to locales on the other side of the planet. What we may not, with Western ears, hear on a regular basis is presented here to enlighten and educate those of us who are unaware of these rich cultural traditions. Is Jacob Kierkegaard the Alan Lomax of Southeast Asia? Find out for yourself.

Jacob Kierkegaard at Discogs

Phinery

--Ryan Masteller

NATHANIEL YOUNG “Stringed Exploits” C14 (Phinery)

Hear the strings that struck themselves, the artist (magician) overseeing, casting spells upon instruments and computer software and bidding his subjects to their own internal sense of euphonic creation. It seems, although it’s not true, that Brooklyn artist Nathaniel Young merely stood back and let the music happen upon his watch. This is not Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2 (although I would never fault you for listening to that). This is a carefully controlled supernova of unexpected tonality, a burst of creativity and meaning in fourteen short minutes.

Long a fixture of experimental music circles, Young operates labels such Blankstairs, Debacle Records, and Motor, the influence of his near-infinite connections coalescing into a singularity of compositional thought. Distilling the ideas of instrumentation, melody, and mood into pure waveforms, Young expands the ideas of what this type of sound manipulation can mean, and he keeps the listener within arm’s reach even as his concepts spiral further from a universal center. Pointillist rhythms, splotchy harmonic vapor trails, and sometimes even discernible instruments swirl around one another in a miniature maelstrom. All “exploits” lead to pure, weird satisfaction on a micro level.

That Young found a home among likeminded artists on Phinery is no surprise – the label continues to churn out amazing releases. And Young’s entry into the larger pantheon, while small in size, resonates deeply. Guys like Seth Graham and G.S. Sultan better watch their backs (and yes I realize that’s shilling for Orange Milk too, so what?). Academic-minded electronic music has never felt so alive! Now wave those magic wands in the face of logic and reason and be transformed.

Nathaniel Young

Phinery

--Ryan Masteller