No Fun Fest — New York City’s annual, earth-scorching, three day noise music event — is the sort of hedonistic celebration of niche-noise that could only flourish in an handful of cities across the world. It’s here that Emeralds made their first major east-coast live appearance in support of Solar Bridge, the group’s proper release debut; the Cleveland trio of Steve Hauschildt, Mark McGuire, and John Elliot performed on stage alongside the luminaries of noise, kraut, electronic and drone, including canonized genre pioneers like Cluster, Thurston Moore, and Tony Conrad, and celebrated contemporaries like Keith Fullerton Whitman. After two years toiling in relative obscurity, with dozens of limited run releases on microlabels over the past two years, Emeralds have now released one of the year’s best drone albums, and performed admirably alongside the genre’s giants in New York. With Rapt for Liquid Minister (Arbor, 2008), an album of sparse dronescapes and heady moog jubilation, Steve Hauschildt proves perfectly capable of enhancing an already sterling reputation as part of Emeralds with stunning music of his own.
Krautrock and analog-synth adulation abound here; ‘Cybernetic Inevitable‘, the album’s ten minute climactic closer, bears an uncanny resemblance to Popol Vuh’s unforgettable 1975 album Aguirre (specifically, Aguirre II), opening with an ethereal chorus of vocal drones. Aside from Rapt’s additional layer of familiar tape fuzz, the Popol Vuh and Hauschildt tracks, recorded generations apart, mirror each other wonderfully, and together echo No Fun Fest’s testament to krautrock’s enduring vibrancy. Just as S.H. seems to be settling into a familiar foggy drone piece five minutes into ‘Cybernetic’, the track departs abruptly from Aguirre and the vocal chorus with a blinding, colorful orchestra of analog-synths. Too brief Cluster or Göttschingand scale analog-synth jaunts, like those found at the tail end of ‘Cybernetic’ and enveloping the album opener ‘Indoor Travel’, prove to be Rapt’s most alluring feature. Rapt for Liquid Minister is balanced nicely with an equal serving of abundant open, droning soundscapes, best represented by the album’s modest title track.
Aside from its unfortunate brevity, the album is a complete pleasure. With only twenty minutes total running time, the album does feels somewhat stunted. Considering Rapt isn’t presented as a full, proper album, however, these complaints are easy enough to dismiss. The album’s brevity does, on the other hand, make for easy and enjoyable listening in short sittings, a rare quality in drone music.
Rapt for Liquid Minister is long OOP at Arbor, but there may still be copies in stock at Fusetron Sound and Mimaroglu Sound for the next few weeks. Expect remaining copies to disappear quickly; aside from an earlier release on Emeralds’ house label Gneiss Things, Rapt is Hauschildt’s only proper solo-release. Fortunately, three new releases, two cassettes and an LP, are on the way, so Steven Hauschildt — performing independently, and as part of Emeralds — should be increasingly visible in the coming months. With any luck, Rapt for Liquid Minister will receive the attention and wider release it deserves. Kranky would fit nicely.
Emeralds @ No Fun Festival, 2008
Cluster @ No Fun Festival, 2008
picture: No Fun Fest 2008-42 by flickr user donatellodoesmachines (please don’t sue me)
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