The sun finally came out this week – and for three days straight, no less! It has honestly done a lot to lift the mood in the house, though it’s probably a false hope and there’s still some more gnarly winter weather on the horizon. Until then, though, I’m absolutely basking in it (figuratively? Literally? Who even knows!)
One of the things I think about more than I want to think about is how to get the word out about the various Foxy Digitalis and Jewel Garden happenings. Anyone who does anything they’re trying to promote knows how difficult it is, and how most of the things don’t seem to work very well. In some ways, it seems like it’s time to just go back to old-school mailing lists and things like that, but I’d love to hear any advice or thoughts anyone might have (I should probably put this question out there on various social media, but that’s a bit of an ouroboros situation). But, it’s a problem that I’m weirdly excited to try and figure out? So many things in the world seem unsolvable, and while there’s certainly not any kind of perfect answer here, there has to be some kind of answer. Plus, I’m going to try and have fun trying stuff out, I think. We’ll see. Holler at me if you’ve got thoughts.
Of course, be sure to listen to the latest Songs of Our Lives with the delightful Jeremiah Chiu. We had a lot of fun. And give a listen to his album with Ariel Kalma and Marta Sofia Honer. It’s stellar.
Speaking of albums, a new one from me on The Jewel Garden on Friday, this time under my new moniker, The Starless Oracle. Seastones is an imagined soundtrack to an imaginary story that takes place on a distant, oceanic planet. Something like that (I wrote a bit more about it on Patreon this week). I hope you’ll check it out.
And, I put up two digital compilations I put out an age or two ago (back in the Digitalis days) that I get asked about a lot. I finally dug up the masters and made a little FD Bandcamp, so they’re available for free if you’d like.
And now, onto the golden eggs.
Jonathan Sielaff Coral City (Siela Tapes)
Coral City is already one of the year’s delightful surprises. Jonathan Sielaff has been part of so much music I love through the years (as 1/2 of Golden Retriever and on Danny Paul Grody’s most recent album, to name just two), but this is his first solo material I’ve heard. It clobbered me like a mountain of soft glass bricks. There’s a pleasing weight woven into each elongated woodwind expression, passages locked in place by the sheer force of emotional density. Sielaff builds each layer with careful, considered movements, adding subtle textures and timbral shifts that melt into glassine arpeggios. The line between anxiety and catharsis gets blurred into these transcendent, spiraling melodies dancing around ascending clarinet expressions. Everything is brighter the further we get from the surface below. Coral City is an absolute wonder. Highest possible recommendation.
Cecilia Lopez & Ingrid Laubrock Maromas (Relative Pitch)
This one is a trip. Lopez and Laubrock don’t miss, sure, but their combined prowess on Maromas will light up an entire subterranean civilization. Clashing timbres melt into new forms, creating enticing sonic combinations that feel familiar while pushing our expectations forward. Fluttering horn passages are bent through fried circuit boards, eschewing any form of bright resonance to stretch electronic tendrils deeper into the soil. Lopez rides a cathartic edge, slicing oscillations into smaller parts, dissecting tone patterns until they can be repurposed as infinite sonic building blocks. Even with harsher tendencies, little slivers of melodicism break through the swirling chaos, little lifeboats to hang on to while this duo pulls everything else apart at the seams.
Funken, Chergui et Hateau Daniel dans la nuit (unjenesaisquoi)
Whimsy morphs into spiraling, multilayered reveries throughout Daniel dans la nuit. Aqueous atmospheres slip between synth patterns and glistening arpeggios, crystallizing beyond the ether like dancing sunbeams encased in glass. An overwhelming melodicism creates sun-kissed, capricious magic tricks that distract us on the one hand while turning our insides pastel. Asynchronous rhythms feel delightfully on edge, teasing us by jerking the wheel in one direction, playfully threatening to plunge this whole amorphous sonic submarine into the abyss. Daniel dans la nuit is light and airy. Once it ends, I wonder if it even existed in the first place.
Fabiano do Nascimento & Sam Gendel The Room (Real World)
Delicacy speaks volumes on The Room, a collaborative effort wrapped in dense patterns and complex themes. Labyrinthine guitar dances spirit Bonfá into a new dimension with do Nascimento coloring every note with a gravitational glow. A spectral shadow hangs in the air around this music, Gendel using the tangible haze to channel timeless motifs into uplifting and introspective saxophone explorations. Each vignette tells a story in the spaces between notes and in the paths the arrangements follow, like a soft, tonic thread gently unraveling, revealing new forms in the ether. The Room pulls us in with gentle cadences and tender, sonic silhouettes, but the potency alive in each verse, in each run, holds the weight of the brightest sun. A revelatory listen.
Itsï Ramirez New Animals (No Rent)
Whimsy is broken down into a visceral portrait across the electronic skeletons tiptoeing through New Animals. Amorphous synthscapes fold into pastel worlds, moving asynchronously in arpeggiated patterns. When intricate, magical landscapes are deconstructed and scrapped for parts, there’s still an air of wonder in the fragments. New Animals imagines all those pieces together in a space with mirrors for walls, bouncing in all directions, off one another, engaging with fleeting moments of joy. Gossamer whispers beckon us further into the gauzy, billowing geography where our perceptions can’t be trusted. Time doesn’t exist here; all of this happened before we even thought to exist. We think this music could fall to bits with one stray breath, but the truth is that because of its elemental nature, it’s an impermeable sonic tableau. Something unknowable about New Animals keeps me coming back for more.
Charles Nyiha “Communion” (Self-Released)
Originally composed for Daniel Rey’s Collective Cuddles performance, Charles Nyiha’s “Communion” is a vulnerable intimation. Piano fragments move slowly like ghost notes abandoned in the darkest reaches. Nyiha never lets go, loosening the steely resolve with ambient string arrangements and emotive synth passages funneled through a liminal matrix. Repeating patterns pull us through the murk into a place where we can let go. The wistful sonic layers hold us close, discarded scraps once again finding form, becoming taut as connections bloom. Chimes sing in the distance as though the horizon is alive. “Communion” bursts open, a dam breaking, our blood once again warm and flowing into the future. Beautiful.
Open Casket Soundsystem Remains to Be Seen (Self-Released)
A black maw grins without teeth, wide open, raining down waves of distorted hellbroth. Eschewing any sort of recognizable forms, Open Casket Soundsystem’s Carl Antonowicz cracks electronic knuckles with a metallic furor. Remains to Be Seen unfolds like a crumpled-up piece of paper soaked in black mud and cigarette ash, as though these desolate rumbles are a nightmare that won’t let go. Oscillations come in waves to rearrange our insides. OCSS feigns at rhythmic propulsion, but the sniping cadence is overrun by noise wall drones surveying for undamaged spaces to destroy. Echoes spill out of underground chasms. We let down our guard. Antonowicz haunts the husks with spectral whispers on “Idumea,” ending the mirage once and for all.
Leslee Smucker Breathing Landscape (Beacon Sound)
Sacred echoes coalesce into tangible forms throughout the background of Leslee Smucker’s beguiling Breathing Landscape. Unvarnished timbres hover weightlessly in the unforgiving resonance of The Tank – a seven-story abandoned water tank converted into a sonic arts space. Violin plucks and whispers rise like smoke into an eternal, sonorous embrace, notes distilled into their core essence. Lilting melodic patterns move at a crawl, each repetition building the strength to stay in the air longer. It’s easy to get lost within the drifting harmonic structures in this music, but when Smucker wordlessly sings, it pulls our focus back inside. Dissonance is always lurking at the edges, waiting to jump into frame atop of gilded, solemn drones. We’re stuck in the languid movements of Breathing Landscape, never sure which direction is up. If we never make it to the other side, we can simply fade into the resonant embrace.
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