AALBERS “F” C30 (Specious Arts)

Barcelona’s Aalbers have done this before. See, back in November 2018, the trio worked up a routine for musical accompaniment at a contemporary dance event – well, “worked up a routine” in that they did that on the spot, considering the “routine” was actually improvised. But sometimes the best things in life are left to chance, and the result was apparently such a success that Aalbers figured they had no choice but to come back to it. And so they did, here, on F.

These new recordings are reimaginings, if you will, of the original improvisations, because, c’mon: you can’t improv two of the same thing! The second thing wouldn’t be improv anymore. What you can do is take the idea – the spirit – of the original and try to recreate it with similar effect or success. And since I haven’t heard the original improvisations for the event (thanks a LOT, universe), I have nothing to compare them to. What I can do is rate them against my own personal taste, and that’s the direction I’m heading in right now.

I won’t drag this out – F is really good. Consisting of three tracks – “efe,” “efeefe,” and “efeefeefe,” according to Bandcamp (no track names on the J-card) – F takes a minimal approach like Fripp and Eno, or Harmonia & Eno 76 (scaled even further back), or, uh, Eno. Utilizing guitar, modular synthesizer, computer, sampler, and contact mic, the trio brews up some post-kraut ambience, a delicate, precise soundtrack that splits the difference between synthetic production and tactile playing. I have no idea what kind of dance Aalbers was backing, but I imagine it was “interpretive.” It certainly wasn’t the Charleston.

https://aalbers.bandcamp.com/releases

https://speciousarts.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

SABRIEL’S ORB “Skin to Skin” C40 (Inner Islands)

Sometimes you get yourself so tightly wound up and nervous that you have to stretch – like a full-body stretch, the way a cat would do – and it sort of helps mid-stretch, but once you’re done the sensation of nerves is almost doubled, so that even though you’ve alleviated it a bit for a moment, you’ve actually kicked it into a much higher gear. Uneasy anticipation, fear and joy all worked and kneaded together within you, can exhilarate as well as enervate. When that feeling decides to hang around for any length of time, you have to try to do something about it, otherwise it can overwhelm you.

That’s where Willow Skye-Biggs, once Stag Hare, enters as Sabriel’s Orb, and it’s Skye-Biggs’s intention to explore similar feelings, “where the ends of joy meet the ends of grief, how ecstasy can also be melancholy, the way so many beautiful moments can contain so many emotions at once.” On Skin to Skin she draws out these complex emotions evenly, allowing them to flow like a “dark river of energy, saturated in longing, in sadness, in desire, in hopefulness.” That’s a great way to approach Skin to Skin, as a lengthy, drifting body, serene yet apprehensive, looking to the future/horizon yet rippling through difficult passages along the way. It’s an apt metaphor for actual human feeling.

And that’s how Skin to Skin goes as it makes its way toward the mouth of the energy river, toward whatever’s beyond that. But it never actually gets there, it just promises to record the passage. And that’s probably the more honest result – the continual motion and ever-changing, though barely perceptible, perspective as hues subtly shift along the bank. It does act as a mellow-outer, diffusing the tension and promoting a relative calm. Another winner from Inner Islands.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/6844448-Sabriels-Orb

https://innerislands.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

COP FUNERAL “Hot Lonely Singles” (Already Dead Tapes)

It was only a matter of time before Josh Tabbia dropped a b-side Cop Funeral collection, right? I mean, dude’s all over the place, releasing tape after tape, also curating Already Dead. Constantly in motion, a perpetual whirlwind. And so here we have it, the Tinder-group-from-hell-titled Hot Lonely Singles, a molten metallic lava trail drooled from the lip of a bubbling volcano. Released on Valentine’s Day 2020, it plays like the lead-up to our current coronavirus-dominated lives: a psychic venereal affliction that also serves to score unlucky façades till they’re devoid of features. Those metaphorical façades are our metaphorical faces.

And so we also grind our ears to dust with Tabbia’s textured noise treatments, pulled from the vaults of time stretching all the way back to 2012, yet some appearing fresh-faced as of the dawn of the new decade. Some are demos, some are cast-offs, some are b-sides. Some were intended for life in iterations other than the one they appear in. Some were never intended for life at all. But what they all have in common is that they were yanked from Tabbia’s hard drive and organized and released into the world, meaning that they were loved, just enough, to warrant public attention. They were even given a physical manifestation and a catalog number (AD327). They were real, they were alive, and they were glorious.

They can also be yours.

https://copfuneral.bandcamp.com/

https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

PRANA CRAFTER “3rd Ear Incantations” C30 (\\NULL|Z0NE//)

And with the release of 3rd Ear Incantations by Prana Crafter, \\NULL|Z0NE// becomes the North American hub of Hypnic Jerk Tapes. Well, maybe not really. But it is true that the stalwart Atlanta label has pillaged two of the acts appearing on the Aussie upstart’s initial tape run. To be clear, this isn’t a bad thing at all – all it means is that Michael Potter, \\NULL|Z0NE// honcho, knows winning tunes when he hears them, and he just wants to release some winning tunes. And with these winning tunes, in the end, everybody is a winner.

Prana Crafter is William Sol out of the great state of Washington in the Pacific Northwest. Using guitar and synthesizers, he crafts a far-out ambient adventure to the stars and beyond. It’s all awe and overwhelming size on side A, and the mysteries of the universe flit by in slow-mo, sometimes penetrating you and granting you the knowledge you desire. On side B, Sol bursts through a vortex and into one-man shred territory, a Floydian dystopian narrative that resolves in acoustic strums and more cosmic synth. With knowledge comes power, with power comes shredding, with shredding comes destruction, so rebuilding is a must. Trip back over to side A to return to that mindset. The shredding will come again, don’t worry. Circle of life.

See? We all win enlightenment.

https://pranacrafter.bandcamp.com/

https://nullzone.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan