#Melody Dieterich

[dustedmagazine]

Deerhoof — Miracle-Level (Joyful Noise)

Photo by Mike Bridavsky

Miracle-Level by Deerhoof

Though they’ve been at it for nearly 30 years, Deerhoof are still finding ways to stay fresh. Miracle-Level is, amazingly, their first album to be fully made in a studio with a producer. Plus, it’s also their first album sung entirely in vocalist/bassist Satomi Matsuzaki’s native Japanese. These circumstances pull the band in competing directions, on the one hand making the music a little more palatable in terms of the sounds, while on the other hand making it more disorientating due to the fact that the words are sung in a different language (unless you speak Japanese, that is). Seeing as the band had to hone and tighten their songs before heading into the studio, the performances are some of the most articulate and explosive in the band’s enviable catalogue, while also making room for moments of exquisite tenderness.

Though Deerhoof have always done a great job with their largely DIY recordings, on Miracle-Level there’s an astonishing depth to Ed Rodriguez and John Dieterich’s guitars, each part complementing the other with unusual voicings. There’s the usual barrage of blistering riffs, plus slide guitar, organ and piano cropping up here and there. From a production perspective, Mike Bridavsky has done a sterling job; the three-dimensional quality of this record is truly striking and exciting, whether on headphones or blasted on speakers. Hard-hitting drummer Greg Saunier is, if anything, a tad subdued here compared to some of his more unhinged playing, but he does get a couple of star turns at the mic: the slashingly dissonant “Everybody, Marvel,” and poignant finale “Wedding, March, Flower.” Befitting their exclamation points, “My Lovely Cat!” and “Momentary Art of Soul!” have a couple of the most punishingly intense and repetitive codas on the entire record, while “And the Moon Laughs” foregrounds a hilariously over-the-top glam-rock riff. In contrast, mellower cuts “The Poignant Melody,” “Miracle-Level” and “The Little Maker” provide some welcome respite from the chaos. 

The album in Deerhoof’s discography that Miracle-Level is closest to in feel is probably 2008’s Offend Maggie, where the band effectively balances ferocity with sweetness, dissonance with anthemic melody. At this stage in their career it feels miraculous that Deerhoof keep on releasing music that’s quite this vital and inventive. 

Tim Clarke

[fanaskher]

The unproblematic Mr. & Mrs. Dieterich had another baby girl lol

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

Bach all day. 

Bach’s adaptation of Schübler’s Chorales demonstrate his talent for inventing a complex, yet memorable counter-melody to simple tunes. In fact, a recurring theme in Bach’s music is making something intricate and beautiful from simple notes. 

Dieterich Buxtehude and other North German Organ composers had already taught Bach that the Chorale could be improvised and variations added, in addition to their usage for Church Cantata’s. Bach once again pushed Chorale variations to their pinnacle, inventing some of the most enduring counter-melodies whilst still keeping the musical integrity of the original. This set begins with the eternally lovely Wachet Auf Chorale. 

It only gets better from then. The legendary Helmut Walcha plays these. 

[galeriewiedmann]

Ich war immer der Meinung, in Willy‘s Arbeiten (das untere Bild) Musik, Klang, Melodie in Farbe in Bild zu sehen, ja wie ein großes Notenblatt: es ist eine umgesetzte Musik von Dieterich Buxtehude. Kommt es aber auch mir vor wie eine große weite Landschaft. Seine Arbeit erinnert mich an ein eigenes Werk (das obere Bild): Landschaft Klang Melodie. Herzlich, tatjanaorlob.art https://www.instagram.com/p/B-clxYCI_hb/?igshid=1bq6k8034dx3g

[allkindsofgoodmusic]

The Album: Dietrich Buxtehude - Trio Sonatas Op 1.

The great Danish composter Dietrich (sometimes spelled “Dieterich”) Buxtehude is still today best known as an inspiration for Johann Sebastian Bach. His organ music is played regularly and nowadays you can hear his vocal music, especially his cantatas, more often. Less well-known is the fact that Buxtehude in the mid 1690s published two collections of Trio Sonatas that belong to the best chamber music produced during the German baroque. These are outstanding works that show Buxtehude’s great gift for melody, virtuoso writing for the violin and also, for the period, unusually advanced parts for the viola da gamba and the basso continuo.

Even if these sonatas are not as well-known as they deserve, there are several great recordings on the market. Trio Sonnerie, Ton Koopman, Manfredo Kraemer, La Rêveuse and John Holloway/Lars Ulrik Mortensen are probably the best examples. But I wonder if not all of those were just now beaten by this newcomer.

This recording was made by members from the English ensemble Arcangelo and their leader, Jonathan Cohen, directs from the harpsichord. Sophie Gent has shown on many occasions that she is one of the best baroque violinists out there today and she plays splendidly throughout. But in this music it is really teamwork that is going to save the day and the interplay between the musicians is simply marvellous. Jonathan Manson handles the tricky gamba part with aplomb and the lutenist Thomas Dunford works great together with Cohen’s harpsichord. Many recordings of these sonatas avoid using a lute in the continuo since it can muddle the delicate textures, but it works very well here.

A wonderful release of some great and still under-appreciated music. Let’s hope Arcangelo returns with Op 2 soon!

[ricardosousalemos]

Heather Trost: Agistri

Heather Trost’s solo debut Agistri feels built to soundtrack stop-motion animation, a riot of flower petals and pinned butterflies fluttering across the frame. As half of the global trad-folk-inspired A Hawk and a Hacksaw with Neutral Milk Hotel drummer Jeremy Barnes, the two channeled a rustic acoustic otherworld with a committed zeal. And while that band made plenty use of Trost’s violins and Barnes’ percussion, drum kits disappeared entirely from the Hawk and a Hacksaw vocabulary. But on Agistri, Trost’s music sounds timeless in a different way, building miniature haunted worlds in the vocabulary of European space pop—unflashy motorik beats layered with art school swirl—as it might be found on an LP hiding in a secondhand shop somewhere deep on the continent.

With its mysterious-sounding cadence and refrain, the album-opening title cut could equally be part of an eerie soundtrack from the 1970s. It also picks up threads from Broadcast and Stereolab in the 1990s, both playful and haunted in equal turns. Just as much about mood as melody, Agistri finds Trost accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Barnes, Deerhoof guitarist John Dieterich, and Drake Hardin and Rosie Hutchinson of Mammal Eggs. Finding a home in space age swing and piles of analog-sounding synths, flutes, and strings, Trost spans from the instrumental library music groove of “Abiquiu” to a cover of Harry Nilsson’s familiar “Me and My Arrow” as if arranged by Magical Mystery Tour-era George Martin. Agistri works from a dense palette that’s either vintage or cloned in a vat.

A sense of adventure connects the album’s far reaches, and establishes a space where lyrics feel secondary. “Plastic Flowers” is guided by a rolling organ and an abstract vocal arrangement that recalls the circus-world fun of ye olde Elephant 6 Recording Company, with which Jeremy Barnes has long been associated via Neutral Milk Hotel. Returning to drums for that band’s reunion tours—and more recently for several albums on his and Trost’s LM Dupli-Cation—Barnes likewise occupies the kit with great personality here. Rarely defaulting to grooves, even during the Brazilian feels of “Abiquiu,” his drums find paths of their own without overwhelming Trost’s songs, half-songs, and atmospheres. On “Bloodmoon,” layers of melody spread over multiple keyboards, as a sense of movement threads across the song’s three minutes. Barnes’ drums ride comparably low in the mix, his fills often feeling more like conversational tics than dramatic flourishes.

Though rich, the songs sometimes seem to function more as sound-worlds to slip into, ready for further exploration. Having also played with Beirut, Josephine Foster, and on Thor Harris’ luminous Thor & Friends, Trost’s solo turn is both awaited and worthwhile, cool and cosmopolitan throughout. On the penultimate “Real Me/Real You,” a percussive bassline (or perhaps melodic drum figure) appears in the song’s intro—a sound that’s not vintage at all but palpably of the present, or even of the present's version of the future. As the song breaks down to a vocal arrangement over a squelching keyboard and rises to its chorus, one might hope it’s Heather Trost’s version of the future, too.

[dustedmagazine]

Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection—S-T (yk)

Spencer Cullum, born in London but currently practicing in Nashville, is known primarily for his skill on pedal steel; he plays that country-identified instrument in his own band Steelism and as a sideman for Miranda Lambert, Caitlin Rose and Deer Tick, among others. But here in his first album under the Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection name, he leans more into the folk traditions of his native England, less into the twang and warble of his adopted Nashville. This self-titled sounds like a long lost, 1960s British folk album, stuffed in the racks behind the Pentangle, Fairport, Donovan and Incredible String Band discs, so that no one noticed it until now.

The gentle “Jack of Fools,” for instance, drifts in on the plunking insistence of acoustic bass, the quiet clack of sticks on rhythms marking out a country waltz time. Cullum sings in a tremulous, unassertive way, both his voice and this folk-picked guitar line following a curving, nonchalant melody, occasionally bolstered by a woman’s harmonies. “To Be Blinkered” is even more pastoral, piano and guitar softly luminous, bird song in the air, and lovely harmonies in the chorus. Here you can hear a little bit of Cullum’s pedal steel winding through the melody, though it’s by no means a primary flavor on this track or elsewhere.

Cullum varies the atmosphere a good bit, adding a driving Neu-ish propulsion to “Dieterich Buxtehude,” trying on a tipsy music hall jauntiness in “Tombre Enmoresheux” and settling into a lush, radiant Olivia Tremor Control-ish psychedelia in “The Dusty Floor.” (This song ends in a stem-winding guitar coda that might remind you — I’m not kidding about this — of the long outro to “Layla.”) Regardless of style, the songs are played in a soft-focus, subtle way, so that they dream and waft and drift, rather than slapping you upside the head.

This feels like a passion project, self-sufficient and inner-directed, but to realize it, Cullum has brought in a crack team of session players from Nashville and beyond. The women singing so prettily in the backdrop include Caitlin Rose and Erin Rae. James Wallace, sometimes known as Skyway Man, plays piano and other keyboards. Jim Hoke, a seasoned hand at all manner of wind instruments who has played with Dolly Parton and Paul McCartney, contributes flute, clarinet and saxophone.  

Many of these cuts are elaborately arranged, with orchestral accompaniments like strings and reeds bobbing and weaving around folk rock mainstays such as guitar, bass and drums. Yet however many people and instruments participate, the songs maintain a translucent purity. They are as light as air, caressing, gentle and serene. This is a skill that hides itself, that makes the stitches so tiny they’re invisible and turns the seams inside out. It’s lovely, intricate and full of ease.

Jennifer Kelly

[dustedmagazine]

Mary Halvorson & John Dieterich — A Tangle of Stars (New Amsterdam)

A Tangle of Stars is a good title for this new album by prolific jazz guitarist Mary Halvorson and Deerhoof member John Dieterich. Knotty spools of radiant guitar tone are flung with abandon. The record will prove either thrilling or annoying depending on whether 40 minutes of experimental guitar duets is your idea of heaven or hell. Any fan of either artist is likely to find a satisfying way in. 

Both Halvorson and Dieterich have an open-ended feel to their playing, whether scurrying around the fretboard in search of a phrase that lands, or tracing out tonal paths that create a feeling of weightlessness and abstraction. Although the liner notes detail which tracks originated from which guitarist, there’s an undeniable complementarity to their individual styles. Familiarity with either player’s discography offers some insight into who may be doing what at any given time, but this music’s appeal lies in its uncanny tessellation; parts lock into each other as if they belong, even when the angles are extreme. 

Opener “Excerpt From Spatial Serenade” has the urgency of a news bulletin, shot through with a maniacal energy, both guitarists pecking away at the melody while a synth swells in the background. “Drum the Rubber Hate” (great title) has the levity of a traditional folk dance, and things start to get really interesting on “Balloon Chord,” as woozy effects add a dream-like halo to the already elusive playing. 

The phrasing and harmonic tremolo tone on “Lace Cap” is achingly beautiful — until the notes are warped by pitch-shifting effects and break down in a granular pool of discordant intervals. “Short Knives” and “Undercover Meltdowns” are the closest to the kinds of slashing guitar sounds that might find their way onto a Deerhoof record; indeed, one can easily imagine Satomi cooing over the top. On “My Mother’s Lover,” Dieterich even introduces some satisfying drums and organ to really lock down the Deerhoof-leaning groove. Halvorson’s “Ghost Poem” is shiveringly evocative, while “Vega’s Array” sounds like the soundtrack to a mafia crime drama if the tape recordings were sped up and on the verge of being chewed up and spat out. 

Elsewhere there are more challenging compositions to navigate. The ironically titled “The Handsome” is an ugly, warped mess, its blaring electric guitars trampling all over each other, screaming into the upper registers. The eight-minute improvisation “Better Than The Most Amazing Game,” credited to both players, is gratingly alien, and proves quite the endurance test as the guitars stumble drunkenly over a bit-crushed drum machine. 

For all its prickly obstinacy, there’s plenty of beauty here to inspire wonder. At its best, A Tangle of Stars lives up to the celestial promise of its title. 

Tim Clarke

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 3, Number 11

Sam Amidon

As late summer wanes and we fret about North Korean nuclear strikes and the eventual end of Game of Thrones (not necessarily in that order), what better way to take the pressure off than good music? Here are ten short reviews of albums we enjoyed, from the free jazz innovations of Albert Ayler to an unexpected clutch of new material from Royal Trux to the folk jazz experiments of Sam Amidon. This time, a skeleton crew of Ian Mathers, Bill Meyer, Jennifer Kelly and Derek Taylor contributed. Everybody else is off at the beach, we think.

Abronia—Obsidian Visions/Shadowed Lands (Water Wings)

Obsidian Visions/Shadowed Lands by Abronia

Obsidian Visions/Shadowed Lands is the first LP by Abronia is a six-piece combo from Portland OR. Judging from the influences on display, these people have awesome taste, but a few priorities come to the fore. The melding of movie soundtrack twang and heavy-hammer power chords shares page space with fellow PDX-ers Alto! And the pounding beat, which is articulated by a parade drum, and the solemn intonations of singer/saxophonist Keelin Mayer and more abandoned vocalizing of guitarist Eric Crespo suggests that they’re aiming for a ceremonial vibe. It definitely feels like a first album, mixing promise with points to improve. The best moments come when they ease back a bit and let the guitars glisten; they could work a bit on vocal presence. But if they made it to my town, I’d be eager to see how it all holds together on stage.

Bill Meyer

Sam Amidon — The Following Mountain (Nonesuch)

For over a decade, Sam Amidon has produced some of the most simultaneously spellbinding and challenging modern folk albums out there, and he’s done it (he has insisted) without writing any songs. As more time has passed, though, Amidon’s rearrangements and reharmonizings of these songs, to say nothing of more explicitly curatorial decisions in making those albums, have left more and more of his own distinct stamp on them. With The Following Mountain, although Amidon still reveres and refers back to the folk music tradition in its myriad forms, he is more than ever doing his own thing (and writing his own songs). This is also the album that most fully embraces Amidon’s love of musical improv and freedom (jazz or otherwise). He’s assembled an impressive crew to give voice to those impulses, including drummer Milford Graves (most prominently on the extended closer “April”), saxophonist Sam Gendel, Jimi Hendrix percussionist Juma Sultan, and longtime collaborator Shahzad Ismaily, among others. Whether the results are spare, droning and harrowing, like “Ghosts,” or as pastorally beautiful as “Juma Mountain,” the result is Amidon’s boldest effort yet. 

Ian Mathers

Albert Ayler Quartet — Copenhagen Live 1964 (Hatology) 

James Joyce had to move to the European continent to find the headspace to write about Dublin. One wonders if Albert Ayler found a similar remove in Scandinavia. The liner notes of Copenhagen Live 1964 open with Ayler recalling that at a 1962 concert in Stockholm, he started to play what was in his soul, and the following year he made his first LP in Copenhagen. That may seem ironic given how steeped in African-American spirituality his music was. But when you consider that how singularly he articulated that spirit, an ocean seems like barely enough distance. This CD was recorded 1964 at Copenhagen’s Café Montmartre with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Sunny Murray, with whom Ayler had made his creative breakthrough Spiritual Unity just two months earlier, and first-generation free jazz pioneer Don Cherry on cornet. Together they distill Ayler’s conception as pure energy and ecstatic melody. This set has been available before, as part of Ayler Records’ The Copenhagen Tapes, so if you have that CD you’re already set. However if you are a fan of Dusted scribe Derek Taylor’s writing, be aware that he wrote the liner notes for this edition.

Bill Meyer

Bourdreuil/Rowden—Hollow cassette (No Rent)

"Hollow" (NRR50) by Bordreuil / Rowden

Improvised and experimental music are often characterized as abstract, but titles don’t get any more concrete than Hollow. Leila Bourdreuil plays cello and Zach Rowden plays double bass, both of which can indelicately but accurately be described as boxes with a hole in the side and strings stretched across that hole. Indelicacy is a hallmark of this music, which revels in the coarse scrapes and ribcage-rattling lows that the duo’s instruments can make. Another is consonance; whatever one player does, the other matches fairly closely, so that the contributions of each player fade into the seething but compressed richness of the sounds they make. The shortness of this tape works in its favor. Since it lasts just 25 minutes, you can get through it twice on a typical urban commute, all the better to get familiar with its woody grain.

Bill Meyer

Cyrus Chestnut – There’s a Sweet, Sweet Spirit (HighNote)

Opting for the aural equivalent of comfort food, Cyrus Chestnut goes for what he knows on There’s a Sweet, Sweet Spirit. Surprises are few – a “Chopin Prelude” and guest appearances by vibraphonist Steve Nelson and a trio of female vocalists – but the pianist is at a point in his career where bold detours and dramatic reinventions are probably off the table for consideration. What is on offer is the dependable sort of jazz-rooted music-making Chestnut’s become known for in the reliable company of heavyweights Buster Williams and Lenny White on bass and drums respectively. A pair of solo pieces zero-in on the leader’s acumen with verdant ballad forms and two of the three Nelson-added numbers are vintage Bobby Hutcherson tunes. Monk (“Rhythm-A-Ning”) and Miles (“Nardis”) also receive laudatory nods and Chestnut has audible fun putting Williams and White through a rigorous set of paces on each, revealing conclusively that age is only a number. 

Derek Taylor

King Woman — Created in the Image of Suffering (Relapse)

No disrespect to the rest of King Woman, who do an excellent job with the heavy, bluesy, Americana-flecked doom of Created in the Image of Suffering, but the most immediately noticeable element of the band’s full-length debut is singer Kristina Esfandiari, from the spectral power of her far-away howl to the set of lyrics here that mostly concern working through a repressive religious upbringing and using the structures and imagery of same to better and more productive ends (including being critical of that upbringing). The songs here are fraught with both power and, well, suffering, but there are few moments as cathartic in music this year as when Esfandiari repeats in a blown-out bellow “you can’t even look at me”, reclaiming the judgment of her oppressors and refashioning it into the kind of angelic radiance the impure can’t bring themselves to gaze upon. That this trim, 39-minute album finds time for moments like that as well as the true faith and sincere longing of the alternatively dense and soaring “Hierophant” make this not just an accomplished debut but one of the best metal records of 2017.

 Ian Mathers

Pascal Niggenkemper — Le 7ème Continet: Talking Trash (Clean Feed)

The so-called Seventh Continent is not made of land, and only specialized maps will show it at all.  It’s a massive vortex of garbage located where currents converge in the Pacific Ocean that’s been slowly growing since the 1950s. Reports of this phenomenon inspired bassist and bandleader Pascal Niggenkemper to form a musical ensemble in which a panoply of tonal colors and musical elements come into play. Configured as a set of pairs — Joachim Badenhorst and Joris Ruhl on amplified clarinets, Eve Risser and Philip Zoubek on prepared pianos, and Niggenkemper plus Julián Elvira on pronomos and sub-contrabass flutes — the group’s music is not especially trashy, but it sure is varied, and it does go out of its way to include sounds some might deem broken. Intricate contrapuntal passages butt up against heaving expanses of sound, and slow motion sub-aquatic ballets contrast with stormy squalls.

Bill Meyer 

Aurán Oritz – Cub(an)ism (Intakt)

Cub(an)ism by Aruán Ortiz

Cuban born, pianist Aurán Oritz is at once deeply of and decisively apart from the musical loam of his country of origin. Through his hands the instrument’s eighty-eight keys and ancillary mechanisms become a portal that erases the temporal distance between ancient Caribbean polyrhythms and 21st century improvisation and composition. The clave is just as integral to Ortiz’s conceptions as those of his forbearers even as he decontextualizes and even atomizes its malleable forms. His right hand will worry or burrow into a rhythmic figure as the left shapes steep, pedal-swollen currents around it. Chordal shards and sharp angles intermix with delicate and fleeting asides into eloquent melody. Oritz also goes under the hood, strumming the strings in zither-like fashion or dampening them to create menacingly muted washes of echo. The music of Cub(an)ism is imbued with a vibrant sense of logic and purpose, presented in a personalized musical dialect that pulls in everything from Peruchin to Andrew Hill to Picasso while remaining indelibly Ortiz.

Derek Taylor 

Heather Trost — Agistri (Living Music Duplication)

With Agistri, Heather Trost makes the break from Hawk and a Handsaw’s gypsy middle European reels to a breezy Europop soundtrackery. Songs were composed not on the violin she wielded in Neutral Milk Hotel and elsewhere, but on a Hammond chord organ, and they trend towards breathy euphoria rather than world-weary continental lament. She works here with Hawk and a Handsaw bandmate Julian Barnes on bass and drums, John Dieterich from Deerhoof playing guitar, and Drake Hardin and Rosie Hutchinson singing back-up, but they sound like many more musicians, maybe a chamber orchestra, in full-blown, lavishly arranged song that are, nonetheless, as buoyantly weightless as soap bubbles. “Agistri,” named for a Greek island, lilts and wafts and swells in space-age 1960s choruses that could easily soundtrack a Brigitte Bardot movie. Loungey, la-la’d “Abiquiu” slips forward, softly syncopated, with little trills of violin under the wordless choruses. It all brushes with the friction of, say, a silk scarf, giddy tropes of organ, bright iridescent clouds of melody, the barest punch of rock-oriented drums, guitar and bass to keep things moving, so that you might not pick out individual songs at first. A few listen in, a few start to take shape, good natured “Me and My Arrow,” eerily luminous “Bloodmoon,” wistful, chorally layered “Real Me, Real You.”  There’s a girl group hook at the bottom of even the most diaphanous cut; they’re like Dum Dum Girls songs reimagined by Stereolab.

Jennifer Kelly

Royal Trux — Platinum Tips + Ice Cream (Drag City)

Platinum Tips + Ice Cream by Royal Trux

The vocals are a slurred snarl, Herrema’s spit and moan turning surprisingly benign lyrics about ice cream and water parks into something diseased and sexual. The guitar wanders in blistered, bombed out disorientation, half Stones homage, half psychotic breakdown. Yup, it’s Royal Trux all right, sounding pretty much like they always sounded, loose to the brink of unstrung, messy, hallucinatory and feverish. These songs, the first new Royal Trux of the 21st century, come after a decade and a half in which Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema didn’t play together, didn’t speak together, didn’t occupy the same room (reportedly right up to the moment they played their first reunion show in 2015). And yet, caught in a couple of live shows in New York and Los Angeles, they catch fire like a pile of oily rags left in a warehouse. “Junkie Nurse” lurches jerkily to life, a roar of feedback flaming and subsiding behind tranced out lyrics, the beat tapped out on snare and cowbell, just enough to keep the thing together.  The “Banana Question” moves a little faster, but just as fuzzily, a “Dropout Boogie” for the new millennium. “Waterpark” froths and foams at the mouth in scary abandon, little backing vocals “oohing,” guitar flaring at irregular intervals, Herrema singing way back in her throat about how “the water’s cold but the sun is hot.”  “Red Tiger Edit” is, maybe, the trippiest of these songs, a distended blues vamp slowed and stretched to the breaking point, thin enough to let the chaos in.

Jennifer Kelly 

Yan Jun and Ben Own—Swimming Salt游泳的盐 (Organized Music from Thessaloniki) 

swimming salt 游泳的盐 by Yan Jun and Ben Owen

Next time you need your sentimentality ruptured, this CD will due the trick. Ben Owen, who runs the Winds Measure label, has been fashioning sound from field recordings and electronics for over a decade; Yan Jun is a Chinese artist and cultural critic. You could call this stuff noise, but that doesn’t do justice to the specificity and austerity of the work.  Swimming Salt游泳的盐 is a single 38.01 track made from Yan’s feedback and Owen’s electronics, and it boils down to this question; what can you do with sounds that are lancet-sharp and sounds that abrade like a fistful of steel wool? Should the listener be into close distinctions, they will find that the answer is quite a bit. This music anti-psychedelic in the extreme; high-pitched filaments draw attention to how your perception of the room changes depending on how you turn your head, and the rising and subsiding fuzz invites your to reckon with the awareness of space. Where are you? After listening to this CD, you will know.

Bill Meyer