It’s been a hot minute since I’ve posted one of these columns, and for that I apologize! A lot has happened since the last one, but the main thing I want to mention is something Ryan/Akira Film Script and I started called the Concrèmo Series on The Jewel Garden. It’s an extension of a genre/idea called Musique Concrèmo, which is probably (sort of) what you think. It’s creating soundworks mainly from field recordings, but the focus of those recordings is a place, object, or activity that is of great sentimental value to the composer. (There is a lot more to it, but that’s the basic framework). We want it to be accessible, too, so it really can be done entirely on a phone if needed. (You don’t need piles of gear! Nobody needs piles of gear, even if I have piles of gear. AGH!). The first two releases are OUT NOW (one from me and one from Ryan), but we have an ongoing open call and would love anyone who is interested to get in touch for the full specs and start creating!
Beyond that, there is a new Field Studies that came out last week. And of course, the latest issue of the Stupid Dreams zine. I’ve been busy.
And here’s a lot of music I’ve been busy listening to as well.
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.
Patrick Shiroishi & Jason Nazary here i am no i (We Jazz)
Opening notes move like inward spirals, pulling closer to Shiroishi’s heartbeat until, with a breath, he lets go, and Nazary picks up the broken thread. This duo is a symbiotic organism, so in unison that each one’s playing feels like an extension of the other. Flowing saxophone runs zigzag through skittering rhythms at lightspeed, like a cosmic pinball dancing, zipping between tonal nodes. In places, the shadows come to the front. Ghost electronics pulse, low and rooted. The space between expressions expands. Notes are held a little longer, and the cadence is still scattered, but also slowed. Shiroishi and Nazary make music that feels like being alive, all sides of it. The beauty and the cost.
Norman W Long Un dialogue entre terre et mer (Self-Released)
There is a caress and then a pummeling. Rhythms and atmospheres are built from dust, both from collected field recordings and the granulated processes Norman W Long applies. He extracts the essence of these sounds with great care, putting the sonic heartbeat on display. Glassine drones shimmer into iridescent toneworlds, eschewing form as the layers dissolve into each other, shapeless and vast. Tiny textural fragments dance in impossible patterns, circled by visceral remnants of the source material. Long veers into naturedub territories, too. It’s a tinge of playfulness buried in the aural strata. Stories pulled from these sounds are seeds of an uncertain future. Every blow is softened, though, whether it’s waves or birds or wind. These pieces offer hints of what we’re losing while still celebrating what’s here.
Perila Come back to your window (Notice Recordings)
The air has a voice and a declaration on Come back to your window, a treatise on quiet disillusionment. Low, textured drones float in dust and static, creating imaginary forms like white noise on a CRT screen. Stories live and die in that black-and-white emptiness, then find renewal within these trailing tonal echoes. This is music that barely exists, but it follows each step taken away from it. Every shade of gray finds footholds on Come back to your window, settled in close to fractured piano chords or drawn out in the long passages of nothingness. Perila surveys the geography flattened below, pulling in this undaunted hum so that it finally envelops everything.
Imisu Ancient Spirit (Forest Kids Collective)
Small vignettes quilted together to make something fantastical, a strange environment built from familiar pieces. Leisurely acoustic jaunts down an emerald green river punctuated by harp processions build the whimsy into this music’s essence. The lackadaisical cadence just feels good, a gentle pleasure romp through vibrant dreamscapes. Bubbling electronics wash over harmonics dancing in pairs, at times creating a surprising Medieval/Early Music effect. Sailing further, tremolo shivers bring a touch of cold and dark joy. Imisu never loses its focus on the sun, light scattering across gilded arpeggios and rhythmic escapades. This music is made from small moments of earthly delight.
Bent Light The Daylight is Ours (Memory Waste)
Like signals from a lost world, The Daylight is Ours comes through in fragments. Elegiac melodies move slow, the light of distant stars flickering out messages in a hidden code. This music sees a destination in the distant haze, and builds toward it with textured drones and scattered harmonic reflections. Guitar lines wind through dust patterns to embrace the journey as something felt more than designed. Eventually the hollow swells of tonic laments stretch across skittering sonic webs, remnants of old myths holding on to the last moments before disintegration. The Daylight is Ours remembers, though. Always.
emer feat. Ugnė Uma you and me (STROOM.tv)
Grayscale fog. Midnight zones. Corridors lined with neon. Hidden shadows. you and me melts all these things into the charred husk of a futuristic city built from soundwaves and fractured architecture. Ugnė Uma’s voice snakes through emer’s beats, a lithe siren threading through this rugged maze like a beacon on a string. Thick basslines grind out the streets below, more space carved for Uma to whisper into. Every angle in these pieces feels worn down, rounded, giving synths an edge of solace stitched into the waveforms. Sometimes you and me veers into uncanny, almost robotic spaces, as though I’m witnessing holograms perform, but the contrast of synthetic sonics and the earthiness and soulfulness of Uma’s voice holds the city together.
Jake Blanchard Divination (Cardinal Fuzz/Feeding Tube)
Light all the fire pits because Divination is burning holes into the dirt, opening up routes to alternate dimensions. Searing guitars, bathed in fuzz and rancor, swirl around each other like two animals sizing each other up. There’s a mountain of tension unconcerned with finding a release valve. Toiling grooves and deep bass lines mold synthetic drone textures into rusted expanses. All of this music feels charred, as though it’s covered in eons of dust, but the ancestral rhythms rise from the depths to rattle off the grime. Blanchard pours in the psychedelic tangents like gasoline, letting the repeating patterns explode into sonic kaleidoscopes. Divination rides the ritualistic chaos so it can open the door.
Finola Merivale & Catherine Sikora Abhaile (Relative Pitch)
Hushed tones extend into muted, open spaces, becoming glowing, sponge-like drones on the opening piece of Abhaile. Restraint is a tool, with Sikora blending extended techniques into emotive tone portraits. Even when the cadence accelerates and the saxophone begins to run, everything still feels slow and considered. The dizzying nature obscures ends from beginnings, using spatial motion as a blurring brush. Merivale’s sonic environments, built with field recordings and electronics, are alive with texture. When Sikora turns up the heat, Abhaile becomes playful, buoyant. Swirling, hollow sound fragments are like wind blasts at the edge of the precise sax sequences. Sikora plays in subtly shifting, repeating patterns. Even with just a few layers, the density grows until the weight of it breaks something open. Movement replaces restraint. Sharp, angled electronics intersect melodic sax explosions before fading underwater and into the crackling night.
Edmondo Annoni Interbeings (Shimmering Moods)
I sometimes think I can only take so much. Edmondo Annoni collars that idea by packing a mountain of sounds into Interbeings. Field recordings are central, turning living moments into sonic material, crawling in microscopic textures and strange melodic fragments. Listening to this is like slithering through the detritus on the forest floor, completely immersed in a soundworld that never stops moving. Percussive elements skitter through the undertones, shifting attention at a rapid pace. Resonance increases to a crystallized shimmer, almost metallic in timbre. Nighttime horn sequences shade the elegies buried even lower in the register. Annoni pushes deeper into the trees until distant voices reveal themselves, ritualistic in the way they move across different dimensions. Interbeings makes this planet sound like somewhere alien.
Leon Clowes Empirical Evidence of the Existence of Angels (Naviar)
I am left with so many questions from Empirical Evidence of the Existence of Angels, but I’m not sure the answers actually matter much. Skeletal arrangements speak volumes across these 11 pieces: a languid violin imagining drifting silhouettes fading at dusk; piano notes searching for the longest path between two points. On the 12+ minute title track, Clowes voice is soothing, as he recounts his thoughts every time he saw a feather over 11 days in September 2021. These words are both banal and poignant, a strangely comforting view of living. The music heightens these echoes, each minimal stroke or chord change leaving room for an inner dialogue to fill the silence. Clowes’ music is at its most striking in its barest, quietest moments, as if each phrase is a container holding oceans. I find myself leaning in closer, seeking an understanding these sounds draw out of me, feelings and ideas I can no longer ignore.
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.
