the submersible dirigible

Little is more frustrating than falling hard for some new artist, only to discover their 30 separate limited release albums, each in handcrafted editions of 15 copies, are all long out-of-print, and selling on ebay for $60 plus a pint of blood.  Thankfully, Portland’s Bonus, the drone troupe of Scott Goodwin, Jamie Potter, and (on occasion) Matt Carlson, feels our pain.  The group is has opened a blog, providing free, downloadable copies of their entire OOP cdr back-catalog.  Visit the BONUS ARCHIVE.  (h/t Maxwell @ Rootblog)

Bonus may be on hiatus, but Scott Goodwin just recently released his debut solo album of electronic drones on Root Strata.  I haven’t listened closely, but I have gotten a quick listen and enjoyed its smooth, sinusoidal droning hypnotism.

‘Off Light’ is the first proper CD by Portland based musician Scott Goodwin, who also spends time crafting tones in the trio Bonus. Not a huge departure from that group’s direction here, although Scott has notched the distortion all the way down and cranked the pure tones up quite a bit. Composed entirely from sine waves, ‘Off Light’ and its companion piece ‘Arc’ are thrilling shifts in variation that move at a slight and measured pace, forming soft rhythmic beats that really seem to come alive at a high dose of volume, bouncing around the room like holographic reflections. If you could imagine a soundtrack to a zoned out meditation in a James Turrell sculpture, this would be it. Edition of 300 in an eye-popping two panel folder.

“I’ll Read You A Story” taken from The Golden Morning Breaks and Colleen Et Les Boîtes À Musique. The video was made by Jon Nordstrom

After a two month wait, Dutchman Wouter Van Veldhoven’s latest ambient release finally arrived on my doorstep.  Considering the monumental delay, I have to assume the simple square six-inch cardboard package’s journey from Eat This Media’s Dutch offices to The Submersible Dirigible’s NYC-based corporate towers was a laborous one, apparently traveling over land by crab-walk, and over the Atlantic by paddleboat.  Fortunately, Wouter’s latest record turned out to be a soothing remedy for injustice, allowing me to quickly forgive the collaborative failure of the Dutch and American mail-carriers.

 wouter in context (bookmarked aac): Download (667)

 

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With only a handful of previous releases — I assume Wouter’s work hasn’t yet captured the eye of most ambient music fans.  Considering Wouter’s Four Simple Songs alongside his earlier, far-too-limited Ruststukken (Slaapwell, 2007), it seems likely he’ll soon be to mentioned alongside the best established work from our era’s biggest contemporary-minimalist super-celebrities.  Stylistically, Wouter’s brittle tape-fueled ambient arrangements feel inspired primarily by William Basinski’s own melancholy, high-altitude tape-glaciers.  “Second Simple Song” (see podcast) makes the most convincing case for Basinski’s influence on the record; the track’s leaky organs and inky rythms are drenched in a shrill, pervasive electrostatic leaking from the track’s warmer, ailing melodies.  Decay and crafted interference burden the more emotive instrumentation like a wet blanket, familiar from comparable Basinski releases like The Disintegration Loops (2062, 2002/2003) or Variations for Piano & Tape (2062, 2006).

Continue reading ‘Wouter Van Veldhoven’s ‘Four Simple Songs for Five Dead Bumblebees’ (Eat This Media, 2008)’

There is light.  We neither see nor touch it.

In its empty clarities rests

what we touch and see.

I see with my fingertips

what my eyes touch:

shadows, the world.

With shadows I draw worlds,

I scatter worlds with shadows.

I hear the light beat on the other side.

– ‘This side’, Octavio Paz

edit: podcast fixed

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Any researcher looking to uncover an exhaustive list of international musical hotbeds, those alluring capitals for creativity and genre-bending developed by the contemporary music underground (e.g., Iceland, the UK, Finland, Sweden, Denmark) would probably find Italy ranked alongside the likes of Mongolia, Cambodia or the United Arab Emirates.  Until just recently, I doubt I could name many noteworthy Italian musicians myself, besides the glorious Goblin, or Luciano Pavarotti — and the latter only comes to mind because I regularly encounter his likeness featured proudly on a wall mural inside my local pizza place.  Goblin and Pavarotti are nothing to sneeze at, surely, but aren’t quite cutting edge.  Partly for that reason, discovering Fabio Orsi’s ambient work — and subsequently the work of Gianluca Becuzzi, Valerio Cosi, among others — has been especially delightful.  Encountering your favorite genre surprisingly well developed in yet another region overseas leads to a barrage of new discoveries.

Fabio Orsi’s Picture Myself In a Cloud (Speaking Through Thought), his first release for ruralfaune (myspace), is the latest in an accomplished catalog of finely crafted, endlessly pleasing electro-acoustic, ambient releases from the Italian musician.  Picture Myself fits snugly alongside an already impressive catalog of under-celebrated releases on the finest of micro-labels, including LVD, Digitalis, and (the apparently Italian) A Silent Place. Continue reading ‘Fabio Orsi’s ‘Picture Myself In a Cloud’ (ruralfaune 2008)’

 

 Fabio Orsi - Part One (Picture Myself..., ruralfaune 2008): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1653)