A quick scheduling update – there will be another Capsule Garden next week to get things back on schedule. The column was delayed last week because I played/produced a show the day before (join the Patreon if you want to see Warren Realrider & I’s debut performance!) and simply didn’t have the time to get this together. But we’re back now.
Summer cranks into gear and the temperature is rising. The next few months are about balancing outdoor projects, 100+ degree days, and all the hydration a body can handle. I don’t know quite how it’s already June, basically.
Thank you to everyone who has bought a copy of the Clarities compilation. It means the world and has been a tremendous help. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I highly recommend it (obviously!).
Let’s get onto the tunes.
Jacken Elswyth At Fargrounds (Wrong Speed)
Composer and instrument-builder Jacken Elswyth returns through the fire, grounded by the ashes and ready to enchant us. At Fargrounds begins with a wistful flourish. Banjo sings with the flames, buoyed by distant harmonium drones and upright bass. Timeless joys run through the veins of At Fargrounds as Elswyth uncovers new forms of old expressions. She hones in on the heart of each song and rebuilds it, sending melodic threads through combinations of familiar corridors and experimental side angles. From one moment to the next, bouncing patterns melt into solid-state drones, scratching out ancient methods in resonant scrapes, thudding creases, and a spirit of volatile exploration. At Fargrounds is only traditional in name because Elswyth simply needs a starting point to craft her own series of clouded beacons for midnight rituals. Highest possible recommendation.
Post Moves Ground Echo Dust (Debacle)
Severed ties molt, leaving behind a new sonic world filled with spacious melodies imbued with an enchanted sheen. Scattered rhythms filter through bowed strings to enliven the forward march of Ground Echo Dust. Post Moves is always attuned to higher dimensions, tripping the distances between elegy and catharsis with warmth and effervescence. Layered movements all dance at connected intervals as though there’s an otherworldly mechanical underpinning, a singular heart pumping blood through these tracks. Voices rise and fade. Lithe piano explorations dissipate into air. New weird spiritual spindrifts sweep the moment away with a gentle push.
W. Realrider & Kole Galbraith s/t (Obscure & Terrible)
Death rattles underneath endless sky blue. When the storm rolls in, electronic squalls quake under high-frequency washes that erode everything beneath. The relentless churn rises on solidified swells, doling out sonic punishment before softening the scorched tonic. Into the midnight masses, an all-encompassing drone grows from rich soil. This is music baked deep in the ground and pulled out to be scatted by Realrider and Galbraith’s capable hands. Rain washes the char from the edges and diverts the blackened debris toward the center where the timbre finds a golden hue. The countless textures running through these tracks are sustenance, fragments to grab hold of as the aural sands shift in the margins. Oscillations disintegrate into mountains of echo, and the remains haunt the residual earth until time no longer exists.
Michael Morley & Joachim Nordwall An Island Is An Island (Stoned to Death)
Dream teams sometimes trudge up nightmare fuel from an unknown abyss. Two legends, Morley and Nordwall, translate blackened lost languages into groaning piles of sonic detritus. Beneath the charred haze, An Island Is An Island goes meditative but without the accompanying enlightenment. This music strips us to bone and sinew, leaving our cores exposed. Harmonic echoes creep through the distorted underbelly like hidden angels afraid of being caught, immersed in the void and drinking it up like rain. Repetitions are foundational, their hypnotic push sparking new electric fields with every forward step. Yet, the details – a light percussive tapdance; an elegiac, hollow resonance – soften the chasm, casting warm shadows against the fleeting emptiness. Incredible.
Mélodie Blaison Avant le Rivage (wabi sabi)
When glass turns into dripping melodies, cast out from sunbleached skies and filtered through entangled prisms, it ends up sounding something like the beguiling Avant le Rivage. Patterns coalesce from synthetic serenades and scattered flute remnants, but their emergence stops in the shadows. Blaison is a puppeteer, pulling diverging sonic strings like ghosts dissipating in the light. Avant le Rivage glows in its empty spaces where notes bloom and stretch, singing in resonant textures that never fully tail off. When voices start beckoning, intersected by sharp whistles and electronic skittering, imagery rises through bubble-like tonal maps and rippling soundscapes. Erratic arpeggios imbue these pathways with movement. Blaison’s music is small and close, but that only heightens its emotive power and the deep marks it leaves on us, clawing out space with each playful spell. Another slice of crucial listening from wabi sabi tapes.
Montgomery & Turner Sound Is (Our) Sustenance (Astral Editions)
This is music pulled down from a higher plane. JayVe Montgomery and Nick Turner are both incredible artists, but together a different kind of sorcery flows from their sonic connections. On Sound Is (Our) Sustenance, they’re also joined by Mary Lattimore, Matt Ciani, and Pepo Galán, and it expands this immersive soundworld. Harp plucks scatter points of light throughout the transient electronics and clarinet explorations of “Spring Became Silent.” Ciani’s electric piano shrapnel permeates opener “Silence is Approaching,” adding a frenetic urgency in conjunction with Turner’s guitar that buoys Montgomery’s emotive playing. There’s a density to this music that wraps itself around us, and the deeper into its astral expanses we go, the harder we dream. By the time the closing title track rolls into view, we’re beyond drifting, we’re beyond floating, and we’re absorbed by the ground. Galán infuses the song with spiraling tendrils while Montgomery and Turner illuminate the neverending horizon. Beautiful.
Maddalena Ghezzi Dolomite (Self-Released)
The latest in Maddalena Ghezzi’s Minerals series, Dolomite springs from the cracks in rocky terrain like a pointillistic aural foam. In collaboration with bassist, composer, and vocalist Ruth Goller, a backward-facing river cuts through a crumbling landscape in search of an epicenter. Voices swirl, disembodied and flickering like invitations above the sky. Ghezzi and Goller’s focus intertwines, pushing lightwaves through rising tides and crumbling, aqueous towers. In moments, guarded spaces emerge through enchanting breathwork and repeating melodic patterns. A lithe cadence switches on while whispers pull us closer and press our thoughts inward, finding safety within as worlds catch fire and become dust. There are quixotic moments speckled throughout Dolomite, but the lingering impacts hang in their own gravity, looking for a way to exist in harmony with places we’ve left in decline.
tenses gardening motions (air tone)
Life teems in the nutrient-rich soil. Aural whispers glow between chaotic forms, building structures from MIDI static, electronic stems, and a host of unrecognizable sonic blooms. tenses is a new project from Catherine Debard exploring chance and spontaneity where the only constant is being in motion. Melancholic drifts take hold in square waves and rising chord progressions, but there’s always a sense of wonder lurking in every corner of gardening motions. Debard rides the connection between chaos and whimsy with joy, sending fragmented rhythms into the leaves to cavort with intuitive bass lines and synthetic spackle. I sit in awe, wondering how any of this makes sense while constantly being pulled further into this multicolored soundworld. A true, unexpected delight.
Quick Hits:
Whimsy functions under a cloud of loss, trickling through synapses like crystalline synth futurism and modded sonic bounce houses. Utopic delights cut by wistful arpeggiations, but we still wonder if the machines love us anyway. Delightful.
Somnoroase Păsărele AUTO[2] (Mahorka)
From a minimalist palette, blitzed rhythms break out beyond a thick, gray fog. Expressive melodic passages are hypnotized by stuttering beats blanketed with enticing monotony. No gloss. No stopping.
Memory Dreams Scorpion? (Artsy)
What if there really was someone calling us from beyond the neon haze? What if those voices aren’t just in our heads? Hypnagogia beneath a crackly synthetic veil, plastic rhythms, and VHS-fused synth worship.
Amina “Un día, todo habrá terminado” (Self-Released)
Morning rain washes away last night’s dreams in a sweeping reflection of organ and strings. Emotive, graceful movements promise a light in the distance, but we’re held back for another moment before the gates break. Beautiful.
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