I didn’t manage to get a Capsule Garden out in July, but it was such a busy month that I’m sure nobody noticed. Summer has been relentless, both in things happening and in temperatures rising. It’s brutal out there.
Anyway, there’s been a lot of action on The Jewel Garden in that time, most recently a new album from two people I adore: Gretchen Korsmo & Cody Yantis. It’s called Moon Ladder and is available HERE. Here’s a little description I wrote about it:
When echoes become measurements of time, movement and space take on new memories. “Moon Ladder” is restrained and slow-moving, but it accumulates soundforms like ash in a jar. Gretchen Korsmo and Cody Yantis communicate through sonic gestures, resonances building through elegiac drift. Each motion is considered – a solemn piano progression, a tender clarinet whisper edged with grief, morse code percussion – an invitation to lean in closer to the sound, to recall our own illusions slow-dancing in the seam between notes. A conversation that leads nowhere is still load-bearing, a connective melody linking quiet affirmations that we’re still here, together, and ready to breathe.
There’s also the return of Mass Ornament. It’s a song called “Doomerism” she composed for an art installation we held at The Bird House this past April called “Hauntedy House.” It was originally supposed to happen in October, but got rained out, so we did Halloween in April. It’s available HERE. Here’s what I wrote about that:
Being terrified means being alive to feel it. Mass Ornament turns sand into churning gears, making dust howl at the sight of bones. A deep hollow calls out like an ancient power waking up, the crunch of its heartbeat quickening and desperate. Darkness solidifies. “Doomerism” is the sound of the end stalking in all directions. Writhing. Grinding. Living.
That’s a lot of news. There’s probably a lot more, actually, but I’ll shut up and get to other people’s music (other, other people’s music):
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Jessica Roch Human Music: Live Improvisations I (Past Inside the Present)
The night folds in on itself through Jessica Roch’s lush, shapeshifting vocal incantations. Human Music: Live Improvisations I floats in a cool flow with synthesizers, piano, and strings constructing lithe frameworks to frame Roch’s voice. Repeating melodies meditate on stillness, on forward movement, and on the tension in between. Plucked echoes form punctuating breaths against classical constructs, feeding sharp edges into interconnected soft sonic memories and elastic movements. Roch’s presence is always felt, her divine invocations looming as a backdrop, ready to come into the light when beckoned. Tonal swells encapsulate this music’s emotive meditations into an ethereal amulet, and being inside of it feels small and safe, being held like a secret.
Nomieye Tapestry of an Echo (Self-Released)
I sometimes like to imagine dreams as tangible, evolvable things that I can hold, or at least touch. Modular synthesis and Rosie Turton’s enchanting trombone playing color in this world with shaded detail, while organic and synthetic timbres write emotive glances in pastel air. Textural melodies arpeggiate, lambent and sparkling. And Is Phi arrives for “Sun in River,” drawing us closer with her words as her voice holds time at bay. An infectious stillness runs through all the movement. Yet, Turton infuses a playfulness into these morphing arrangements, adding to the complexities of this work. Mystery speaks in tone fragments and harmonic reverie.
Kelli Connell Walking Notes (Dreamers Lane)
The intimacy of someone’s voice notes and personal journal scrawls can be too much sometimes. I like when something feels like too much, though, and Kelli Connell’s debut recording, Walking Notes, is simultaneously way too much and small enough to fit in my pocket. Constructed from a series of voice notes, field recordings, and sonic experiments made while working on an upcoming book, these 40 minutes are their own story. Quiet footsteps melt into poetic affirmations or reminders before dulcet piano chord progressions, blanketed in tape hiss, pull the thread a little tighter. Impromptu sing-alongs lighten the mood. Birds sing across contemplative drones as a small, whimsical interruption. Connell’s reflections have a certainty even in the questions. They’re matter-of-fact, the breaths in between destinations that are the most fertile spaces. Arrival is an afterthought.
The Modern Folk Nine Pound Hammer (I Heart Noise)
The range is calling. It’s a place I’ve never been yet know in my bones. Plodding folk mechanics grow roots into the dry soil, Josh Moss’s voice baking in the heat alongside them. Fractured structures break down further in the march toward capital’s hollow void. Nine Pound Hammer is a relic, steaming with forward motion that can’t be held back by rusty shackles or loose sutures. It’s all too far gone. Blues fragments melt into punk static, looking for someone on the side of the highway to help get the hell off this merry-go-round. This is music for worn-down souls sick of temperatures and prices rising past the horizon and blocking out the sun. Hell yeah.
Kr-Krr Nebulage (sirr)
Down the funnel and away it goes. Bubbling aquatics become electronic signals spinning in all directions, a dizzying-yet-gentle sea explosion. Nebulage brings together the compelling combination of modular synthesis and the Ondes Martenot, timelines diverging and colliding somewhere in the future (or past?). Echoing tones whirr at high frequencies, theremin-esque, like calls from deep space. A standstill occurs; these adjacent toneworlds show minimal ebb and flow, hovering in restraint. Drones purr in the lower registers, starting as a whisper before building into a flowing cacophony. It’s all sharp angles and gauzy murmuring. Nebulage is genuinely strange. Sputtering oscillations and hollowed-out buzzes speak different languages simultaneously while still saying the same thing that creates its own logic. It doesn’t make sense, except when it does.
Evan Lindorff-Ellery Morning Spheres and Piano (Self-Released)
Angular, spirited piano pandemonium opens up a memory hole straight to my grandfather’s church. Natural resonance dips into pointillist metallic clangs, the shattering of a golden orb into glissandos galore. It’s all a bit raucous and feeds off focused disarray. Lindorff-Ellery goes feral on the keys, firing off rapid arpeggios in succession as if they’re keeping the roof aloft. Distant crackles reveal themselves to be glass spheres smashing together across the room. It’s repetitive, hypnotic. After a pause, the piano returns with some restraint, skying chord progressions that dream of being deep in the ground. I highly recommend checking out all of Evan’s recent solo self-releases.
Marcel Sletten Plastic Jazz (Primordial Void)
Neon finds a home in glitched narratives and emotive melodic speculation on Plastic Jazz. Marcel Sletten’s latest is a stratified futuristic excavation, a stripped-down symphony that trails off in pools of liquid metal. Rhythms coax the dancefloor into action, reimagining the flicker as instigating grooves. A series of glassine sequences lightens the midnight moods with shaded whimsy and reflective timbres. It’s all in the searching circuits, sounding manufactured but pleasurable. Sletten turns sterile environments into gliding, warm sonic streams impossible to resist from any distance. This synthetic world leans into its plasticky sheen to find elegant moments where they’re usually overlooked. This is a wall of tonebanks flickering, come to life.
Asha Tamirisa Pois Chiche (presses précaires)
Gurgling masses, deconstructed to the circuit boards, are a writhing spectacle on Pois Chiche. Asha Tamirisa follows a winding, haphazard trail, chasing electronic foibles into the oscillating viscera of a static soundworld. Drones get splattered against faded wood panels until they sputter out some sort of secret code in saw waves and phantom bleeps. An ugly delight.
Toby Summerfield Bodies of Water (Self-Released/Island House)
I somehow missed this when it came out at the beginning of the year, but it’s a cool, virtuosic reprieve in the depths of summer. Toby Summerfield’s technical mastery of the guitar has me in awe of how he channels that into mountains of expression and emotive generosity. His fingerpicking moves at breakneck speed, each note a brief, bright thing. Yet each of those notes holds a piece of a life story. Breezy drones flit in higher registers, the calm around this expressive swarm. There are moments of lamentation, esoteric flutters, and aqueous ripples throughout Bodies of Water, yet the heart of this music always rings loudest. Summerfield wears it on his sleeve and in his fingers, building a lighthouse from steel string and electronics that measures the distance to the edge of all things. (Tape released by Island House)
Ayami Suzuki & Rob Noyes Classic Fevers and Chills (Feeding Tube)
This stellar session originally came out in 2022, but was reissued on vinyl earlier this year, and the world is better for it. Classic guitar structures are resonant beings cascading outward from Noyes’ hands. He starts from some inner space, holding the sound close before letting it flow downstream where Suzuki is waiting to meet it. She sings with a lightness, her voice flickering effortlessly in the air above the steely framework. Wordless expressions float like dandelion seeds, tranquil drifts across aural seasons. When things quiet on Classic Fevers and Chills, warming timbres emerge from a hidden cocoon. Suzuki and Noyes play off each other, tracing edges and emptiness together in an accidental choreography.
Cloud Circuit s/t (Watch That Ends The Night)
For some reason, listening to this feels like the sonic equivalent of searching through microfiche. The duo of Deanna Radford and Jeremy Young are joined by a host of excellent collaborators, making this feel like a world that’s bigger than an album. It’s scratchy and tactile, spoken word slowly morphing over electronic whirrs and saxophone whispers. Tape crackle acts as a brain massage, opening up tiny crevices for Radford’s words to seep in. With a meditative cadence, she collages found, sometimes innocuous phrasings into poignant reflections, whether it’s from spam or a family recipe. Sharp electronics spill into some places, creating an edge for distorted guitar scrawls to cut through. This is music for overcast skies.
A few more quick hits:
Seabuckthorn Never the Same River (Lost Tribe Sound)
Plucked, percussive strings set against ambient ghost canyons and droning strings. Textural, detailed. A ritual of getting lost.
LOVP La Oficina de los Viajes Perennes (Pakapi)
The future we were promised 50 years ago channeled into crackled tones, crude rhythms, and haptic feedback. Morphological fuzz moonbaths.
Visible Light Sierra de Luquillo: A Living Soundscape (Self-Released)
Cello swells, and flute reflections echo through the jungle canopy, mixing with electronics and the ecosystem to find holy resonance.
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.
