Category: Reviews

DECAYCAST Reviews: Electric Sound Bath “Of This World” (Moon Glyph, 2020)

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Electric Sound Bath is the new age / ambient duo of Angela Wilson & Brian Griffith. Their newest, “Of This World” is out now via the mighty Moon Glyph Records. Large, swelling synths, rumbling sub bass undulations slowly bubble up through ambient swells on forgotten tones, a warm but slightly unsettling and unresolved tension. Electric Sound Bath is the perfect conceptual and sonic reference for this work, as the tones eclipse the listening space in a spacious and breath-like eclipse of sound. Channeling early Eno and Godspeed You Black Emperor, ESB’s tones slowly peak and dip with a graceful ease, a constantly shifting tone poem enacted with grace and precision. relaxing, calming, and blissful despite holding a tight intensity at times, never fully resolving to “background sounds” but engaging movements of pressure and movement.

The duo’s sounds have room to undulate within controlled structures, allowed to breathe on their own without much chaotic interference. Like an old ham radio beckoning into an empty sky, with hope of contact returned. Bordering on psychedelic ambient, and new age, the sound switches gears occasionally but slowly and carefully, dark and low string sounds guide the work like a distant light ahead, while warmer and more glassy synth voices continue to pulse – shimmering ever so steadily through the thick fog of the sonic space.

“This long-form creative process mirrored the duo’s own life trajectory and experiences ‘of this world’. The result is a celestial wash of MIDI-driven modular synthesizers crafting slow, unfurling caverns of sound. The type of deep, meditative tones that reward loud and close listening. Allow this music to patiently flow over you, reveling in the crystalline details and heavenly peace.”

Order now via Moon Glyph Records

DECAYCAST Reviews: Laura Luna Castillo “Tuberose” (Whited Sepulchre Records, 2020)

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DECAYCAST Reviews: Laura Luna Castillo “Tuberose” ((Whited Sepulchre Records, 2020)

Ohio’s Whited Sepulchre Records brings us another underground gem with the hauntingly moving and inspirational new album from Laura Luna Castillo exploring themes of time/place, fragrance and experience, and the sound waves a wonderfully complicated line between all of these. The sounds present on “Tuberose” evoke unknown histories as worlds with a dash of familiarity, like a distant world buried deep within the subconscious rhizome. The sound is both ethereal and cinematic, often holding a powerful tension both compositionally and within the sounds themselves. It’s the music for a slow growing tree; it stretches only inches between the time we are born and when we die, yet we can still be transfixed on it’s beauty, power and growth.

The natural world. and it’s sights and sounds, isn’t something foreign to the artist and her practice. Castillo states, ““I was inspired by the book “The art of perfumery, and method of obtaining the odors of plants” by G.W. Septimus Piesse from 1857 in combination with the exploration of the study of time, memory loops, ephemeral and elusive memories.

Oscillating in sonic zones akin to Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, A Silver Mount Zion/GYBE, the ambient sections of Neurosis, and early Wendy Carlos, Castillo blends experimental compositional techniques with stunning epic, over-arching movements in sound and space. These compositions hold great tension in many different moods, which Castillo stitches together flawlessly, as they shift between haunting, and reaffirming, morose, and explosive. Huge moments happen with the space of a few seconds, and yet, we have to dedicate our mind and ear to the entire journey and it’s slower changing moments as well, as they necessitate their own timelines of experience. A vastly complex and interesting album for so many different reasons which are better heard than read about . Castillo’s sounds, like nature, are complex, complex in detail in the most rewarding ways, at times unsettling even, but overall present as an abundance of sonic beauty. Powerful powerful music, hard to classify, and what’s even the point, just go buy it here.

Highly highly recommended.

DECAYCAST Reviews: B L A C K I E “Face The Darkness” (2020)

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B L A C K I E: Face the Darkness reviewed by mynameisblueskye

“What is freedom to the average person?”

How ever you answer that question, the one thing you should know is that it probably doesn’t mean the same thing as does to art-punk auteur Michael LaCoeur aka B L A C K I E. To those who have ever listened to B L A C K I E, you will release that his album represents a natural freedom. The freedom to just be the man he was made to be without the world seeking to destroy him or cage him in. Nomadic by nature, nonconformist by choice and perhaps even by nature and unafraid to encourage it for others in his position. The opening lines of “While They Try to Kill Each Other” outlines one of his overall thesis of being B L A C K I E over electric drums better than any of us could ever try.

“Children laugh while they try to kill each other/at least the blood returns to the earth where it belongs, and out of the hands of in power”, bellows Michael in his dry and world-weary town crier scream. With danger everywhere in his wake, it would make sense that he finds silver linings here…if that is what you want to call it. On “There Is No Light”, he reports the history of laid waste in front of and committed towards the people. “There was no food, there were fists/there were no light, there were fists” all to come back to the devastating line. “We use to eat each other!” Entrails wrapped in crimson blood line the periphery of wherever B L A C K I E looks, even amongst those who towards those who call themselves allies and heroes. His second overall thesis “I am not you’r nigger!” is delivered in an angry tone only punctuated by a deep sense of pain and sorrow.

B L A C K I E’s mind may be a mass of continuously spinning wheels, but he will be damned if it ever spins for you. Even as he tackles topics such as suffering from a crippling addiction (“How to Let It Control You”), toxic “patriotism” (“Wave Your Flag”) and fascism/fake empathy (“Uncounted”), Michael knows that even HE is not above occupying the hot seat. Painting a picture of anxiety through a descriptive lens, “Meet the Demons” is claustrophobic in its description of not being able to think and feel freely.

Not being able to just be without judgment. So, after all of this, hearing him emerge free and ready to escape on “It Can’t Define Me” feels not only heartening, but like an anthem written to those looking for their own escape. B L A C K I E’s Face the Darkness may start off as B L A C K I E in the slaughter line witnessing victims meeting their end in HD and plotting his escape from such slaughter, but it sees to it that he isn’t his own cause of danger to himself. In the midst of this, B L A C K I E emerges with one last message (clue, rather) that overall defines not only the entire album, but the world and the philosophy of B L A C K I E: “Look around/Don’t look down”.

– Mynameisblueskye

Mynameisblueskye is a singer, songwriter, poet, and occasional blogger. An American-born Renaissance man who loves music so much, he has too many videos in his Watch Look after list. His bandcamp can be found here:

DECAYCAST Premieres: Bryce Hample’s Hedia – untitled 3 {VIDEO PREMIERE}

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Morose and warm new visual from Hedia – “Untitled 3” from the Quartets cassette that came out in July. 

A beautiful union of enveloped, undulation machine of reverberated moods; a warm refreshing breath in cinematic neo-classical minimalism.  Pinched tones, crawling,  yearning for a new breath, a new beginning, Hedia works the space  of decaying sound in a beautiful and nuanced treatment of the sounds themselves bringing the space to live in a tremendously rich pattern.

With hedia, I hope to create a blank space for the listener to enter and find stillness for a moment, unfocus your eye, escape from the desert heat.” – Bryce Hample

Microscopic sonic events washing ashore fade into arpeggiated synths, but only for a few seconds as envelopes of sound and vision open and close on the viewer to create a somber distortion in both time, place, and vision.  A blurry fade into an unknown place, loss, grief, strings, sadness, hope all sputter past each other like blurred pedestrians buzzing through a rush-hour rain station. For a few moments, we have some peace.

 

video, by Bryce Hample

Hedia is the music of multi-instrumentalist Bryce Hample. Hedia is spacial music, creating a place to inhabit, if only temporarily. Musical spaces to encompass the listener, unfolding organically and spaciously, in a blanket of drifting piano chords, viola da gamba, brass, subdued guitar, and tape manipulations.

 

DECAYCAST Premieres: Ezra Feinberg “Castle and Sand” & John Kolodij “Beyond the Fragile” streaming now! (Whited Sepulchre Records, 2020)

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Ezra Feinberg & John Kolodij share the first two tracks off of new LP on Whited Sepulchre Records. , 

The preorder is live now and the LP comes out August 28, 2020.

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Ezra Feinberg shares “Castle and Sand”, A beautiful, warm, introduction to a slowly shifting, bending, humming soundscape, unfolding inside the ear, setting off a trigger of washed out humming strings, a caucophanous silence, a briightly lit star millions of miles away, these. tones escape the source and paint a distant hum that grows brighter, and quieter. John Kolodij’s “Beyond the Fragile” escalates the listener to fever pitch psychedelic hums of bending light across a plush, dimly lit, mist cloaked forest.

On his side Feinberg compliments Kolodij perfectly with warm strings resonating and shaking across a barren sea. drenched in reverb, archaic strums pluck broightly across a sea of glass. Friction like a creaking ice tray about to crack Feinberg’s music is relaxing bt holds an intensity that could erupt at any moment but never quite does, leaving us on the edge of bliss and loneliness.

from the label:

“Bless whatever cosmic winds brought together this split between NYC guitarist and composer Ezra Feinberg and multi-instrumentalist John Kolodij. Traveling deep blue highways of the mind, their split LP opens up the stunning vistas that link these two artists in sound and texture.”

Preorder the LP HERE,  scope out W S R  vast and eclectic discography  HERE

DECAYCAST Reviews: VYLTER Industries “I” (Holojamz, 2o2o)

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Vylter Industries ( VYLTER, Serotonin Jackalope et al )  creates at a seemingly unimaginable pace, so much so that it’s often hard to get a full grasp of the previous work before the next one drops, though with “I” the project now known as Vylter Industries) is back with one of the heaviest and darkest offerings from the project to date;  smoggy, dense sonic explorations to take us into a narrowed hallway encapsulated with the spilling blood-purple haze of an unknown space in reverse.

 

“I” is cavernous riffs bleeding into each other like a sonic hurricane. Slow motion controlled chaos.  Blending chopped and screwed, doom, vaporwave, and ambient styles “I”  never strays too far away from a defined sound, while at the same time weaponizing a wide range of sonic modes to wage a psychedelic trap against monotony. “I’  casts thick doom-ridden clouds into a crowded space where the listener spirals into a psychedelic frenzy. Heavy, distorted waves crash in like a digital sea, enveloping sight, and screen before a grasp of reality occurs, just for a second. Distant strums become closer and more menacing as “I” pulls you into an uncontrolled acceleration, spinning against the walls of time, a life and death sonic vortex. Powerful powerful sounds.   Highly recommended.

BUY “I” HERE!

DECAYCAST Reviews : Graham Dunning “Panopticon” (Every Contact Leaves A Trace, 2020)

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Experimental music stalwart Graham Dunning‘s newest release via the  Every Contact Leaves a Trace imprint   Panopticon  is conceptually interesting as it is sonically, and this is a tough crosshairs to hit, but once again, Dunning does this effortlessly. Dunning reverse engineered and then replaced video game sounds with his own sounds and used the gameplay triggers as a compositional tool as we understand it, with some really interesting and rhythmic results. Panopticon starts off with mid to mid-fast tempo jarring, hammering beats, ala Pan Sonic reel to reel demos 300% sped up and progresses into more delightful sonic madness from there. Dunning’s beats and rhythmic structures are complex; alienating, cold, and yet delicate and nuanced. Oscillating between glitched out, hammering beats, to more distorted, churning,  slower-moving sections, the sound and structure of Panopticon is always changing, and always refreshing and building upon it’s previous iterations.

“The research consists of four main phases: The first phase involves extraction of the silhouette of an individual. Calculating the gait period or gait cycle of the individual follows this. Finding the sum of silhouettes is the next step. Finally, similarity score computation and matching process is performed for recognition. Any two images when compared using root mean square value are said to be similar if the value falls under the given threshold.”

Like the eye in the sky it can see you but it can also control you from all sides, slowly reeling you into a violent, repetitive system that slowly encapsulates you and rapidly shoots your flailing body down the robotic assembly line into the center of sound itself. Complicated and dense, Panopticon is one for the sonic adventurer delving into the sonics of cybernetics cast across a futuristic, barren, wasteland.

Recommended listening!

Purchase HERE

 

DECAYCAST Reviews: Tristan Welch “Asset / Defect” (Self Released, 2020)

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On his newest EP, “Asset / Defect”  Tristan Welch explores a timeless dichotomy  of positive and negative expansions and contractions through space, silence, time and sound. Through glassy, shifting drones and tone poem movements ringing present, like a warm blanket after a cold night adrift on the nights moon last beam.  The album opens up with beautifully articulated  mid tempo oscillating synth pulses,  a faint buzzing underscored with a warm bath of tones; a calm yet slightly unnerving  respite; a rest for the restless, for the anxious, and for the forgotten.  This is slow patient, music, for one in a process of uncertainty, as well as one of discovery knows  that things can change, and every once in a great while, for the better, and maybe this time they will, that is the question this music asks, what is  change,  and when will it be cast upon us?

‘Given the inherently political nature of most of his music, “Asset / Defect” is a rare turn inward for Welch. As a person in recovery, “Asset / Defect” is an audio/visual accounting of sorts, a result from tallying up the ledger of negative character defects and positive assets. An accounting feat that is musically reflected in the clear balance between beautiful, ebullient tones and grainy distortion held at tension within the work.”

The A side  “Asset / Defect” seems a bit brighter in sound presentation overall but across the twenty minute EP, Welsh offers two movements which compliment each other in a dichotomy of undulation.  Wet delays and thick intertwined braids of reverberated strings cast doubt to those casting doubt, give hope to those giving hope, and push us all to look inward to a change of fresh air and relief.  The B side offers a similar, more contemplative, introspective place where the listener can identify with these living breathing wave manipulations, like a warm bath, tingling the skin, but never fully encapsulating the full dynamic of touch and pressure. Beautiful music for complicated times.

 

Highly recommended.

 

-Dr. Decaycast

 

 

DECAYCAST Reviews: Corsica Annex “Doors Outside” (Ingrown Records, 2020)

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Corsica Annex from Brooklyn creates delicate washes of ambient hum that will aide to calm even the most nervous and pent up listener.  Beginning  with wishing, weeping waves of  encapsulated warmth; a homely and resounding analog synthesizer din. The  psychedelic sound of “Doors Outside” slowly envelops and drifts away to a different place. Fuzzy, dream like tones gently lift light into the barren, lost eyes like the morning sun’s cast across a frozen, unsuspecting rose from the night before.

The mossy vibe slowly shifts into a repetitive string piece, undulation coupled with a morose progression that leaves the listener in the unknown. Warm organ like tones pulse uncertainty like a shifting leaf lost in the wind. Steve Reich style  string arpreggiations gloss over even more dense patterns of organic sounding  water-grown, nano bots, sonically somewhere connecting  Cloudland Canyon , Tim Hecker “Radio Amor” and later era Tangerine Dream, Corsica Annex have concocted a heartfelt electronic mood  bound to resonate with even the most passive listener.

Buy ‘Doors Outside”from the Ingrown Records bandcamp page, and check out the rest of the tapes from the batch here

 

-Dr. Decacast

DECAYCAST Reviews : Jordan Reyes “Closer” (American Dreams, 2020)

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On “Closer” Chicago artist Jordan Reyes taps into the unconscious of sound.

 

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Chicago’s Jordan Reyes is no stranger to sound, or stage, or production, or fitness, or  running a distro, or running. In fact , there doesn’t seem to be much he doesn’t have a passion for, except maybe standing idle. Between documenting music through writing for Bandcamp and his own blog,  as well as a slew of other outlets, running a label (American Dreams) , and a myriad of other projects, including performing in Afro-Futurist Avant Gospel ensemble ONO, whose  brand new record “Red Summer”  Reyes released on his own imprint.  Reyes seemingly lives and breathes sound . and his newest record “Closer” released on  American Dreams, is nothing short of a  stellar dive into atmospheric, minimalist synth compositions that are as mysterious as they are present for the listener. Reyes songs are deep explorations into the unconscious, sub layers of warbling droning howls topped with crisp and  crumbly textures. Sometimes rhythmic, sometimes sparse and stripped down, Reyes blazes his  own path of experimentation without using more than the sounds require.  A study in presence, something this music just bleeds is it’s presence and honesty.

On “Closer” Reyes sounds aren’t over produced or layered into confusion, but rather delicate, conscientious., and open; traits perhaps more needed in the often stale, contrived,  meanderings of huge modular systems, often devoid of their own identity or soul, dare we say. “Closer” sings to the listener in a way that is simultaneously  refreshing , and yet somehow nostalgic, it could even be said that his sounds reference certain “folk-like”  qualities to both their presentation,  and relationship to each other. Even the cover art reads like an old idiosyncratic map, inscribed with traditions of past and glimpses into  unknown futures.

 

“Closer” uses a variety of sonic strategies and compositional tools to tell it’s story, a personal story, a unique story, a familiar yet original story, and we can’t wait to read the next chapter.  The titles give us a clue into the  discovery that Reyes seeks with these compositions “Lost Man” ,  “Slow Walk” , “Stumbling Home”  could all be cues for dramatic turns in a film yet to be produced, or cues for self reflection, a strategy to decipher meaning our of the void we all know is there.  Are we closer to death, closer to a new  discovery? Odds are, it’s both, and Reyes music seems to  embrace  at once both the complexities and simplicities of life. The vibe is present, deep and nuanced as  get closer inside the mind of someone on an uncharted path using sound as the flashlight. Relevant and real music for  very unreal  times.