First Impressions 013: Reverb energies, dislocated techno, art-drone damage and more.

Initial vibes on new music

Hello!

Here’s a short version of a newsletter that contains short reviews. Still, there are some great records covered this week - word length is not in inverse proportion to quality. Speaking of quantity and quality, I should mention that a lot of my listening time this week has been devoted to the Cindy Lee album. Though with that, my brain immediately switches into manic pop thrill mode and I’m unable to formulate any thoughts past one-word exaltations. And I love that.

Staying with quantity and quality, one of the richest resources for music online is Aquarium Drunkard. If you haven’t seen the news, they’ve gone to a paid model and this is my shout out to support this new venture in what must have been a tricky decision for what always feels like a collectively shared experience to go behind a paywall.
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OK, let’s go:

sentiment - claire rousay: This could also have easily been called Sediment. Claire’s piece for Longform Editions, it was always worth it, was where she first coined the term ‘emo ambient’ and featured a text to voice breakup letter along with a recording of her crying in the shower. Her ear for the emotion in everyday detritus remains on her shift to songwriting with Sentiment, and intertwined with her own personal decay there is also a direct move into bleaker realms. The songs – glacial folk-like confessionals with post-rock expanse, experimental shading and auto-tuned vocals – are a suite of crushed dreams. To steal from her beloved Mark Linkous, founder of Sparklehorse, this album is a spirit ditch: slow, sad, and like a favourite childhood toy with the batteries running out. It’s compellingly painful, voyeuristic and one hell of an affecting downer.

It Means A Lot: Ulla & Ultrafog: Beautiful, billowing ambience from the first outing for this seasoned pair, who continually expand their register of expression from a standing set of elements. A gentle whirl of guitar delays, spectral vocal swabs and pattering textures emulsifies into a dream-pop glaze that operates on a kind open-hearted subterfuge. Reverb is an energy.

Lone - Tadleeh: Hazina Francia’s cavernous electronic works conjure heavy drama from a melting pot of hard techno and even harder sonics. Dislocated choral voices, ominous rhythms, gurgling textures and elongated guitar lines invoke a foreboding headspace, but there’s more than a dark heart here as Francia extracts a warm buzz from this dream of disquiet with her exuberant energy.

In E – Water Damage: The Austin, Texas collective pushes some buttons on this new one, just not too many. That’s their point, and it’s rather pointy. Sounding like Terry Riley if he swapped out John Cale for Cosmic Psychos on Church of Anthrax, the humid press of this rough-cut rock minimalism hangs heavy across four long tracks that rumble nice and low to the ground. Locked in, it sometimes felt like I was being frogmarched to the finish line with each track. Then Stockholm Syndrome kicked in and I was glad for the damage done.

to belong - marine eyes: Cynthia Bernard’s marine eyes project is an unashamed throwback to clear-eyed and humble synth ambient in search of idyllic space. These giving pieces capture the sweep of changing seasons, and when the folksy hues on bridges drop in around halfway through with Bernard’s breathy, hanging vocal beckoning us to draw nearer, we’re in a place where memory and the present are at peace. 

Moon Pulses – Nick Millevoi: Like a smudged kaleidoscope, this six-song guitar suite paints starry patterns with a murky undertow. Millevoi doesn’t seek to liberate his playing from this album’s forbearers, citing Eno, Fripp, and Daniel Lanois in his constellation of inspirations. These tapestries of intimate feeling swirl with the atmosphere of late night free association, unguarded and tingling with the echoes of solitude.   

Thanks for reading.
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Andrew Khedoori is the curator of Longform Editions.
First Impressions visual by Mark Gowing.