How in the world is it already November? That seems fake to me. I don’t believe it. Alas, another BC Friday is upon us. The Jewel Garden has been busy. I released the first-ever Wet Bear full-length a couple of weeks ago – A Cabinet of Golden Errors. It’s strange and fun and a little silly, and it’s a space I want to spend more time in. I am also releasing the next edition in the Concrèmo Series today, Substak’s Structures of Feeling. Check them both out (and anything else at The Jewel Garden – you can pick up anything for whatever price you can afford.
With that, here’s some more music to investigate:
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Dream Crease Blue Hour in the Living Room (PFR Records)
The hours drift later and later until the world no longer feels real. Dream Crease (aka Marina Aguerre) crafts aerated drones that swirl, veiled aural drifts that find form from gauzy structures. An imaginary silver thread runs through this album, connecting pointillistic sequences and nimble synth melodies. Nymphic textures embrace the feathery tones, spurred by aqueous arpeggios and Aguerre’s delicate vocals. Still, there is gravity in the center of these songs, emotive resonances that the ambience orbits. Passages dance by with a confectionery softness, shaping these soundworlds into a sonic unreality.
Matt Weston Call Out the Instigators (Self-Released)
Matt Weston’s music makes me want to make up words to describe it. Call Out The Instigators is electric, zapping with saw-like precision from the opening seconds. Weston conducts a lightning storm for performative angles. Orchestral-sounding pops are disorienting, hinting at the coming dissonance that feeds the glitzified shapes. I feel like I’m under attack, but kind of like it. Jittery flop is stretched into sonic putty, and even at peak resistance, it globs into sounds of machine guts and dizzying chatter. Weston may be a drummer by trade, but all these hollow echoes holding hands with nearby drips treat rhythm as a distant oddity. A dissected monologue repeated to infinity; a decaying epigraph for a society that belongs in the mud.
Court of Violets s/t (Magnetism Crafts)
Sometimes where there is smoke, there is just more smoke. Court of Violets’ (aka Amanda Bristow) hazy expeditions through jagged sonic terrain are meditative candy. Drones become dreamworlds, slow and constant, with guitars ringing against closed windows. There’s a subdued, pulled-apart rhythm underlying the hovering melodic incantations. Bristow’s voice sits at the center of these songs, whispering long-forgotten spells with an assured calm. Diverging aural textures push against each other throughout this album, finding a stillness in the tension. Court of Violets uncovers bliss in the margins and lets light seep in.
marine eyes hidden hour (cloud collecting)
Cynthia Bernard has shaped her marine eyes project into a lighthouse. Ambient synth swells grow like cumulus clouds, stretching in asymmetric directions while filling the air around them. Chord progressions take familiar songforms and blur them into tender truths. Bernard guides every passage, holding the cadence to an unhurried motion. Guitars ring out in places, giving the amorphous harmonies a welcome metallic sheen. hidden hour is surprisingly tactile given its wandering arrangements. But it’s Bernard’s voice that hangs like a benevolent spectre above the shapeshifting toneworlds.
Jörgen Gustafsson All is in questions (Evergreen)
Slow patterns become permanent fixtures, etched with soft edges into frosted glass. All is in questions is introspective and, at times, feels too vulnerable as Gustafsson strips the atmosphere down to its barest filaments. Notes scatter in a crawl, creeping toward an imagined point with a languid focus. It’s like plots on an unseen map written in disappearing ink; only when the tones glow does something reveal itself. Gustafsson uses restraint to keep this music emotionally taut. The spaces on All is in questions are quiet and waiting. Chord progressions hover above fragmentary, minor-key melodies, veering toward stillness until this music becomes an embrace.
Steven R. Smith Half-light Unfolding (Eiderdown)
Grass spikes dance in silhouette, moved by wind and purpose. A gentle cadence is a ballast keeping these tracks earthbound. Half-light Unfolding sways beneath a bright saffron sun, warm and relaxed, always leaving a reflective impression. Steven R. Smith’s guitar playing has always been singular, but here, he casts new spells and walks old paths. Ageless melodies use lithe sonic structures to build soft forms even as they veer into sharp angles. Steel strings howl inside wood, buoyed by delicate piano chords and unvarnished percussion. This music feels lived in, from the ease with which Smith wanders across dusty landscapes to the way it disappears over the horizon.
Morgan O Now Time (Self-Released)
I’ve often wondered what it would feel like to emerge from a chrysalis. Morgan O captures that moment of genesis and cradles it across Now Time. There’s a stillness in this work that comes through with emotional force. Each note hangs in the air longer than expected, and each time, it lands like a gut punch. Their breath sounds move back and forth, left and right, bringing an intimacy to this music that makes me feel like I’m in the room. Warm tones tell quiet stories. The slow build pays off with sharp guitar phrases and an electronic dissolution.
Anthony Child Beginning of the Shadow (Silver Threads)
Restraint can hold an ocean. Anthony Child’s Beginning of the Shadow has a quietness to it, sonics carved from silhouettes, but it still goes off. Brooding electronics turn into murky slush inside the darkness, a swirling cauldron of synthetic clangs and phantasmal drones held together by minimalist, steaming rhythms. Sawtooth exorcisms get thrown onto an altar of repeating sequences that spell out secrets in an ancient language. A narrative unfolds across Beginning of the Shadow in processed textures and hollowed-out percussion, and it keeps the enigmatic truth shrouded.
Michael Moore Blue Dreamers (Bumpy)
One look at the cover of Blue Dreamers and I’m already sold on whatever is about to happen. Then, pumping lofi grooves stream from my headphones, all the dancefloor gloss removed and funneled into miasmic basslines. Voices repeat banal mantras, processed so they feel important, but it’s all uncanny. Disembodied vocal samples roam elastically across minimal beats and a plodding cadence. Blue Dreamers glides like a hand scanning a retro-futuristic radio dial. Meditative sonic missives become a soporific embrace, a quiet in-between space. Then the neon returns, riding horn samples bathed in midnight tones, waiting for the sun to rise.
Ibarra Rezc Tamayo “Terra” (Facade)
Chaos is painted in darkness, as the austere sonics burrow into waveform valleys. Oscillators spew molten metal and whirr life into the dead husks of resonant percussion and splintering drones. Sharp risers scatter across debris fields, their structure fading into caustic echoes. Somewhere among the fuzz and hiss is a world half-remembered, etched in electronic forms and waiting for the plug to finally get pulled.
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.
