It’s been a real hot minute and my apologies for the delay in this installation of The Capsule Garden. Life has been on a wild tear the last two months, and while I still haven’t come close to catching my breath, there’s just been way too much good music in my earholes to keep quiet.
First things first, a quick bit of news. We announced a new project in Tulsa earlier this week: The Bird House. A quick overview:
The Bird House is a suburban backyard micro-gallery intended to break down barriers and stretch definitions. The lines ordinarily drawn between home and public, between community and individual, between art and audience, between artist and gallery are all stretched outside of their usual bounds and expanded. This intimate space invites touch rather than repelling it. Its existence in a suburban backyard shows that art can be made and viewed anywhere; it doesn’t have to be confined to urban galleries in large cities.
That’s been taking up a ton of time this year (building it, painting it, etc), and it’s all coming to a head right now in the best way possible. Focusing on things closer to home is where I’m at right now, so it’s taking a bit more of my time. (There’s also been a host of new sounds on The Jewel Garden including a solo jaunt I recorded early in the morning after the election that might be of interest).
With that said, again – people are cranking out the good stuff like there’s no tomorrow (because at this point, there may be no tomorrow), and I have a whole host of thoughts on some of those things. Get it.
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Megafortress Adversary (Strategy of Tension)
I’m drowning. Everybody’s drowning. But Megafortress? Soaring to the fucking moon. Adversary absolutely goes. Wind synth spits fire as far as the eyes can see, as long as the ears can hear, dreaming in odd scales and anarchic fantasy. Drum machines are jettisoned in from decades past, slathering grime and distortion all over the driving rhythms. Guitars melt into caustic whims before ghost howls chase them back into the murk. Megafortress keeps things gilded, though, with sharpened melodic leads etching out memorable patterns in our skulls. Everything here is grounded, though, whether it’s hypnotic, springing basslines or earth-shattering beats. Once we’re in the thick of Adversary, in those flying solos and foundational globs, it’s like being pulled apart. Sonic gravity is going in opposite directions, and it’s a damn delight. Gears never stop churning on these tracks, living the dream of perpetual motion and scarring each moment with instructions for the end of days. Hell yes.
Aisha Orazbayeva With My Lute (Constructive Music)
I love when artists deliver something unexpected and Kazakh composer Aisha Orazbayeva does just that with With My Lute. Fragile melodies are stitched into simple, cascading arrangements. Orazbayeva’s voice is airy and fractured, tethered to the ground with taut steel strings. Violin explorations dance lithely above like the ether coalescing into magical shapes pulling us forward. On the flipside, “In Darkness Let Me Dwell” with Peiman Khosravi carries similar moods into synthetic sweeps and futuristic sonic realms. Minimal rhythms pound traditional scales and structures into electronic dreams, with Orazbayeva’s vocals sculpted into aural marble forms. A beautiful mix of centuries and styles.
Weirs and Magic Tuber Stringband The Crozet Tunnel (Notice Recordings)
This is a collaboration written in the soil, the four members of Weirs and Magic Tuber Stringband, both North Carolina-based, seemingly always headed for a beautiful collision. Recorded live in Virginia’s pitch-black Crozet Tunnel, this music is ancient and ageless. Sacred harp ghosts echo into each other like divine paeans. Water dripping from the ceiling is a gift of life from a concrete sieve holding eternal resonance like glass in the palm of an unseen hand. Music that, at its core, pulls drones from the air, but together these four break the solid mass into individual breaths. That doesn’t mean this is disparate or rambling – these single threads glow and melt into something winding and new. Each stretch is a phantom, metallic and drawn from somewhere deep and distant to be let loose like fire in the darkness. Incredible at every turn.
Maral Patience (صبر) (PTP)
Even though this is a collection of tracks from across many years, there’s a sharp-edged thread connecting all of it. Maral builds worn, gilded structures on heavy foundations of scarred rhythms from propulsive flows. Marred by cut imagery and cracked concrete, Patience is jagged yet hypnotic, the roundabout structures wrapping around us like thick fog. Beats cascade at sharp angles leaving intricate, hollowed-out channels Maral fills with marred and manipulated melodic club forms. The palette is dense with warped electronics, live drums, and Iranian samples, all of it converging in all its head-spinning, body-shaking glory. Listen on repeat.
Abbey Blackwell Big Big Motion (Self-Released)
I feel embraced by Big Big Motion. Crunchy, ramshackle romps and intimate acoustic whispers cast long shadows against serene scenes. Everyday moments become winding, scarlet lullabies highlighting Blackwell’s warm voice. There’s something straightforward about these songs that’s so captivating as though removing any unnecessary accouterments the signals embed deeper into our core. Jangly guitars breathe atop a solid, propulsive rhythm section, giving everything a familiar feel as though these songs, even tinged with melancholic comfort, are a tender embrace. Blackwell just nails it here, and as the evenings become crisp and silvery, Big Big Motion glows even brighter.
Lamina Sueños acuáticos (mappa)
Welcome to a world of aqueous dreams. Synthetic blips percolate and bubble in a shapeshifting neon amalgamation. Beneath the crystalline sonic brightness, something darker lurks in the undercurrent. Arpeggios swirl and create whimsical shapes that revolve in complex patterns. A certain mysticism lives in this sonic world as if these harmonic fervors were pulled from an air of eternity. But everything is so organic and submerged that each spiraling, melodic vortex has us floating in unending blue. Digital bells harken light structures illuminating that unseen darkness in the margins, ensuring this music covers all bounds. The deeper I get, the more I become some kind of aquatic creature adrift in the interminable current. Amazing.
Post Moves “Love’s Temporary Occurrence” (Longform Editions)
Post Moves aka Sam Wenc pulls apart a previous piece of work, mutates it under gentle duress, and coaxes new forms from the ashes on “Love’s Temporary Occurrence.” Dull shards of metallic string and resonant wire clash with a winded holler, spread out across stilted plucks and morse code, dissonant melodies. Static runs build into rhythmic shadow dancing. Wenc buoys a joyful air with languid patterns drifting apart before constricting back into shape. New movements come into range and press forward with uncertain convictions that heighten the vulnerable atmosphere cradling these sounds. Once things slow down, a series of hazy visages move in slow motion against a cascading backdrop. It’s traditional music from a different dimension, classic and imaginative propelled forward on a sympathetic cadence beyond the horizon. Post Moves always lands.
Mattie Barbier paper blown between the spaces in my ribs (Dinzu Artefacts)
Guttural transgressions from deep in the mantle spill in slow motion across charred landscapes. “(lamentations) for éliane” is funereal in its movements and considered in its scope. Using prepared euphonium, each note stretches and bends into shape, an illusion of curvature and controlled resonance. Barbier’s sounds pull us downward and suspend our focus in oblivion. The title track sprinkles memory fragments on an evolving drone. Percussive textures bring in our focus as the soundworld expands in all directions before the ghostly, steel resonance envelops us completely.
gabby fluke-mogul and Lily Finnegan Throw It In The Sink (Sonic Transmissions)
Throw It In The Sink and make a screaming, howling stew. Skittering rhythms erupt into bombastic percussive squalls as Finnegan builds foundations and breaks them into bits. Intricate movements scatter across minimalistic planes before going all in. As ever, gabby fluke-mogul and their violin are a singular point of explosiveness, tethered intrinsically and always in motion. Plucks are quiet, vulnerable sound points floating in empty space, an invitation to become immersed in the coming chaos. Questions are posed, melodies spackled into cracked cadences and flowing sonic whirlwinds. Violin shrapnel catches us all in the wind with fluke-mogul winding up the tension for Finnegan to pierce. Throw It In The Sink rises and falls with energetic determination, only pulling back when the moment calls for it, when listeners need space to breathe and remember and dream. Essential listening.
Foxy Digitalis depends on our awesome readers to keep things rolling. Pledge your support today via our Patreon or subscribe to The Jewel Garden. You can also make a one-time donation via Ko-fi.
