It’s been an eventful week or so here but in mostly good ways. The biggest news is that last night we got to bring home the two cats we adopted – Spark and Finley.
They are very shy, sweet boys, and we’re just over the moon to have them at home. Today’s Capsule Garden graphic is, obviously, in their honor.
Elsewhere, Songs of Our Lives is absolutely cooking. This week’s episode with MIZU was such a treat – she gave me a crash course on some classical pieces and composers. I absolutely loved it. Over on Patreon, you can get a peak at next week’s episode (with the extra Patreon-exclusive section, like there is with every episode) with the inimitable Matana Roberts. I’ve got some really special stuff coming up for you all.
Speaking of Patreon, I began a new series over there breaking down and sharing new songs as I finish them for the next Starless Oracle album that I started a few weeks ago. I’ve never done anything like this there or elsewhere, and it’s already been interesting for me to sort of break down and think about my process and approach this way. I’m so used to just being neck-deep in it that it’s offering a new perspective. I’m pretty excited about it. (Speaking of The Starless Oracle, thanks to Marc Masters for the beautiful words in his latest Bandcamp column).
Alright, now for the things you’re here for – oh wait! Mountain Movers just announced a new record!! Amazing news. Alright, here we go…
(Oh, and by the way – I announced this on twitter last week, but for now The Capsule Garden is moving to every-other-week. Putting out a column each week was starting to absolutely drain me. Appreciate your patience and support!)
Felix Machtelinckx Night Scenes (Subexotic)
Midnight is a wide-open, continually evolving world in Felix Machtelinckx’s hands. His voice is the neon beacon guiding Night Scenes through blackened corridors. Intricate electronic productions dance across complex beats, gliding through arpeggiated chord progressions and hazy melodies. Soft pads get blurred by rough textures to placate the elegiac spaces each of those sonic moods leaves in their wake. Each of these vignettes tells its own story, from the cadenced, dark pop layers of “Love Made Me B*tter” to the submerged ancient folk of “Little Cuts” and ecstatic prayers of “Dreamer,” Mactelinckx is pulling a million strings in multiple directions. Synth passages soar in search of release on “Insomnia,” looping in haunting patterns across cryptic, rhythmic messages. Night Scenes shows us so much, but never loses its center of gravity. One of my early favorites of 2024. A stunner.
Liis Ring “I found what I was looking for” (Longform Editions)
Inside the amorphous architecture of memories, clarity is fleeting and time is an unfixed point. Static images break apart into small sonic dialogues, internal recollections that lead us onto a surprising pathway. Field recordings are layered and processed into narrative textures fusing ideas with melodies while burying all of it under a moment of dust. Liis Ring’s exploratory spirit sings from within throughout “I found what I was looking for,” echoed in rhythmic water drips and ghostly beckons. The way the piece flows is captivating, pulling us further into this sound world where birds move slowly without purpose and stretched, airy serenades for the dreams we bring to life before the bells wake us. Beautiful.
Lamina Bajo Tierra (wabi sabi)
Small universes burst forth from deep sea bubbles in the opening explorations of Bajo Tierra. Tones and textures dance in elliptical orbits where electrical circuits spell out the future in all its rippling glory. A sense of foreboding threads itself through the music on Bajo Tierra, Lamina spellcasting through every avenue at her disposal. Unstable drum beats build a circle around aerated drones while making space for her voice to twist in hypnotic patterns across the spatial plane. In the undercurrents, electronic splatter covers obscured melodies in faded, aural pastel. Moving between rhythmic exploits and spacious, searching tone fields, Lamina conjures primordial dreams from ancient, goopy soundworlds. It’s bizarre and endlessly enticing as the further into the Bajo Tierra abyss we go, the more dimensions we uncover. We may end lost forever in the cascading, melodious current, but that’s not such a bad thing. This is a lot of fun to listen to on repeat.
Klein “wicked dreams” (Self-Released)
Nobody does it like Klein. Sonic shadows move within a dense fog behind metallic curtains. The slow-moving articulations bubble and scrape against an unseen veil, as though this music lives just beyond our dimension, in a place where corporeal bodies disintegrate and our dreams become tangible mountains. Split into separate sides of conjoined aural twins, “wicked dreams” lifts into the night on plucked acoustic strings and Klein’s pitch-shifted vocals. Tenderness wraps through the emotive chord progressions, layering her voice into a gentle cacophony. “When I look up at the sky and I see, and we all fall down.” The universe folds in and opens up wide. She is the best.
Grimório de Abril Castelo d’Água (Muncipal K7)
When I last checked in on Grimório de Abril (aka (Veridiana Sanchez), I was excited about what might come next. Enter the fantastical journey that is Castelo d’Água. Dramatic arrangements run through unending sonic landscapes, punctuated by sharp acoustic timbres and submerged rhythms. A playfulness emerges in lilting piano arrangements and mischievous vocal incantations, all of it spinning around spinning recollections. The melodiousness of this music rises to the top, bouncing across the jilted cadence. Layers of spindly guitar explorations bisect electronic textures flooded with backward-facing memories like an ageless gravity pulling us toward an unseen origin point. Sanchez spins aural gold and blasts it through a fractured prism, capturing the refracted aftermath and planting those seeds in the sonorous waves. This project just keeps getting better.
Joel St. Julien “Unblend” (Self-Released)
“Unblend” opens still spaces. Joel St. Julien always taps into these vulnerable moments with a slowly unfolding sound, leaning into the resulting tension as it builds. Soft, flowing drones feel like melodic whisps in the periphery that push our thoughts inward, held aloft by crossing chord progressions. Emotive flourishes flicker in the troughs between each wave, all of it imbued with a translucent quality that feels light but close. Once the sharpened corners come out, St. Julien shades every passage with opaque tones and melancholic harmonies. By flying so high in the beginning, this breakdown hits even harder, but it’s here where St. Julien really shines. Complex electronic sequences intersect, lifting us into the unstable ether. As different patterns break apart, the fog dissipates and offers glimpses of the intransigent light.
Lisa Cameron, Alex Cunningham Chasms (Waveform Alphabet)
Some duos are meant to be and this collision of Lisa Cameron’s stellar percussion work and Alex Cunningham’s infi-faceted violin scrawl is one of those. Spacious rattles seek out boundaries ripe for crushing, opening toward bowed snare howl and cryptic violin whistling as a call for focus. Cunningham and Cameron are always either searching or following, finding intricate pathways to plow through, pulling each other along for the ride. Dissonance glows red hot before crumbling into a slow-motion, melodic helix. A well of metallic resonance opens the way, and together with scratched-out codes, heightens the background tension woven into each of these sonic textures. Patterns form, hypnotic in one moment, falling to pieces in the next. Even when it gets quiet, a haunted friction creeps in and coalesces into frenetic energy. We’re on the darkest edge ready to plummet into whatever nothingness sings loudest in the glorious racket. Every section of Chasms is an adventure, rocky, intricate, and always engaging.
water is the sun s/t (Self-Released)
I can’t shake this feeling of being lost in a storm as water is the sun’s first EP comes to life. This duo of Michael Anderson (Drekka, BlueSanct, etc) and Adam Parks (Timber Rattle) conjures engrossing soundworlds imbued with a blurred, ancient energy. Ether parts in asymmetrical divisions, errant tones spiraling in one direction, buoyed by incandescent organ drones roiling beneath. It’s like a small flame burning against the cold, a speck of warmth against an overwhelming backdrop. Anderson and Parks plot an intersecting course through jangling percussion and ghostly leads that reveal the crest in the distance.
Technical Reserve PP-07 (Party Perfect!!!)
Ever wonder what it might be like to be a tiny insect that gets lost inside a machine? What do singing circuit boards sound like when encased in glass tubes? Technical Reserve goes absolutely microscopic on PP-07, scratching out ideas in chalk and blowing them into nothingness with skittering methodologies and bizarre musical escapes. TJ Borden’s cello inquisitions certainly ask questions about the limits of the instrument, but then Hunter Brown and Dominic Coles put these tones and textures through the ringer. This combination of organic, hollowed-out resonance and sharp electronic timbres is fascinating, and the line where one ends and the other begins is blurred to the point of invisibility. Infinite bleeps and dissonant skree find strange beauty in a malfunctioning world. These 19 (!!) pieces are weirdly fun to get lost in. I’m here for it.
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