The Capsule Garden returns, and on a different day than usual. I planned for this to go out on Wednesday but ran out of time on Tuesday and realized, hey – this is my website, I can put things up when I want to. Duh. So, The Capsule Garden gets a Friday shout this week.
Speaking of shouts – I have to mention my friends at One Aux, Carl Antonowicz (Open Casket Sound System!), and Tood Woodlan (A Thousand Plateaus!). They’ve been running a monthly open-mic noise night in Tulsa for over a year now, which is mindblowing in itself. To celebrate, they’ve put out this rad tape compilation (and koozie!) featuring artists who have played at One Aux during that first year (including my favorite, halo_error). Check it out and support the cause!
Here are some other bits of audio magic you should check out, too…
Liew Niyomkarn In all possible places at once (Chinabot)
Liew Niyomkarn’s music comes from all directions, spreading across 360 degrees like a growing sonic universe. Percolating electronics mix with ambient field recordings, all rife with intricate details that give this music a feeling of closeness. Niyomkarn’s voice doesn’t cut through the ethereality so much as it frames our view. Words flicker like synthetic patterns dancing with organic, tonal shifts and aqueous dreams. A golden resonance emerges; a lost glow reignited. Even in elegiac moments, like the melancholic burn of “incoming” or the shimmering glitches on “a tangent, a reminder,” In all possible places at once is an infinite dream stretching in all directions. Pure magic.
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe Recessed Draughting (Self-Released)
On this beguiling collection of “pastoral and gestural compositional moments for voice and electronics,” Lowe’s ability to distill fleeting feelings in sonic glass shines. Momentary lapses find their way into electronic matrices, spreading like synthetic viruses masking outward movements. Within an aural cloud of disembodies voices and textural shimmers, Lowe opens a channel to ghostly realms that simultaneously feel peaceful and otherworldly. Melodies are flecked with gold streaks, a contrast against amorphous sonic clouds churning in the periphery. It’s baffling how comforting this music is with its underlying eerieness, but Recessed Draughting takes something vaguely familiar and spins it into new zones where we can be still and dream.
Lucy Sissy Miller Pre Country (Métron)
Pre Country is a funny title for this record because Lucy Sissy Miller takes the idea of ‘country music’ into the future through alternate dimensions. From the opening, enveloping drones until the sun rises behind the metallic sheen of drifting guitar melodies, Pre Country twists genre forms into boundless, folk-tinged dream worlds. Elegiac vocal melodies drip from auto-tuned skies, drowning the shattered wooden piles blanketing the ground. Heartbreak comes in waves even when buffered by vocoded space ballads or shimmering musical drifts. This whole thing is expansive in its scope, a lifetime of memory distilled into a moving sonic narrative. An absolute stunner.
Georgia Denham with love (Sawyer Editions)
An arrangement of fractured motifs sends seed tones through the air, planting new sonic worlds from each fragment. A quiet piano whisper spells out messages in code on wistful string explorations, the gentle cadence moving softly, waiting to be broken apart by the wind. Georgia Denham wields tenderness like a knife on with love. These pieces hang in the balance between being still and feeling paralyzed, where magic unfolds from tension; the moment just before the sun breaks the horizon. Notes held longer than breaths of anticipation. Sweet moments are shattered and renewed, with love grows deeper with each listen.
Younes Zarhoni s/t (KRAAK)
When fused, harmony and silence become an exponentially powerful force. Younes Zarhoni strips away all other distractions, using only his voice and the spaces in between to perform a series of medieval mystical poems. There’s a surreal quality to each of these four pieces, heightened by the ways Zarhoni uses his voice to shape otherworldly harmonic phrases. The quiet in between passages adds a layer of vulnerability, offering space for quick reflection. This music levitates.
Tomin Flores para Verene / Cantos para Caramina (International Anthem)
Dawn breaks, waking up the streets before smoke rising in the distance can touch the sky. Tomin splits this record in two – one side of pieces from the luminaries, one side of originals – before stitching it back together with intimate aural waves. Clarinet and trumpet layers elicit visions of familial memory and ideas of grandeur all wrapped in a frayed, well-loved package. Tomin takes familiar works from the likes of Mingus, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Dolphy, and others and brings them home. Contrasting timbres open the soundworld wider than the horizon, quietly carving out secret spaces for our spirits to dance and be free. Cantos para Caramina is a sonic love letter in a series of reveries. Melodic murmurs and tender embraces held in song, moved by gentle cadences. These humble offerings are rich, beautiful gestures, everlasting. I adore Tomin’s work so much.
Veryan One Universal Breath (quiet details)
It’s an arpeggiated life on One Universal Breath, Veryan’s entry in the excellent quiet details series. Morphing rhythms puncture holes in the ether extracting floating ambient soundscapes from beyond and surrounding us with sinuous waves. Within these spacious drifts, melodies flourish. An emotive spirit winds through each passage to construct spectral imagery and expressive arrangements. One Universal Breath covers a wide range of emotions, but there’s always a sense of restraint, leaving listeners their own space to fill in specifics. Lines blur and light fades as we lose ourselves deeper within this aural abyss, but with the music surrounding us, we never feel completely lost. There’s an underlying comfort in these soundworlds that never lets go. Wonderful.
bahía mansa ruralia (Florina Cassettes)
It’s always a good time for new sounds from Chile’s bahía mansa, and on ruralia, Iván Aguayo is dreaming of some place quiet. Field recordings mixed with synthesizers will always capture my attention, but Aguayo’s approach is captivating. Calming textures come together with mutating tone waves to create a sonic portrait of an intimate life. Every minimal gesture is enhanced by the stripped-back palette, heightening the gravitational pull of each billowy arrangement. All of this music pulls us inward, though. It’s a vulnerable space, pushed forward by emotive melodies perched on gossamer electronic motifs. Some moments are underscored by melancholic silhouettes, but Aguayo is always searching for memories lost in time, for forgotten moments waiting to surface again. ruralia is a dream.
sorbitol drops Remízek Music (Gin & Platonic)
This is what a concussion must sound like. Head-pounding beats are a relentless undercurrent to wild, glitched-out soundscapes that manage to be simultaneously catchy and abrasive. Organic sounds are scattered into granular forms and repurposed as rhythmic elements or melodic patterns. Remízek Music was produced with a six-channel audio installation in mind, but even in stereo, it’s satisfyingly dizzying. String plucks echo, beckoning alien forms from the overgrown undergrowth. Infinite tonal textures become a secret code language, unknowable on some level, but innate and eternal on another. Nothing makes sense. Shapeshifting cadences break at 90-degree angles, siphoning off oxygen like a wild sonic vacuum. Remízek Music is an intricate maze, and the less I understand it, the more I want to hear it.
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