First Impressions 052: Slow dance dissolves.

Initial vibes on new music

Hello,

I met up with a fellow in Berlin once, who told me he’d love to visit Australia. He had one immediate concern: “How cold does it get there?” Naturally, you wouldn’t want to travel all that way and be caught in anything remotely close to the brutal German winter. I replied that, at least in Sydney, we start to complain around the 12 degree mark, maybe higher. “You mean plus 12?” he asked. I recognised my folly instantly and spent the rest of the day pondering my charmed life, never having held an ice scraper or contemplated Gore-Tex. And yet, I can feel the cold approaching here, and the music below feels perfect for my delusion.

Andrew

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OK, let’s go:

Trick of the Light - Eli Winter: Eli Winter’s previous self-titled album had the energy of a puppy bursting out of its box once home from the pet store, yet his guitar work was both dexterous and dazzling, steeped in a highly lyrical strand of folk revivalism. Trick of the Light rings with the same joy and craft, taken into new realms of fluidity and scope. His choice of two jazz covers signposts the turn he has taken. The opening rework of Don Cherry’s Arabian Nightingale summons a bluesy shuffle and swagger in its rhythmic kick before Winter bows to Cherry’s communal instincts for the ensemble to rip it open and run free with scorched melody and controlled chaos. For Carla Bley’s Ida Lupino, Winter keeps the faith in the stately charm of Paul Bley’s wondrous piano-led takes, ushering it a little more skyward into new majestic highs with swaying pedal steel and Winter’s impossibly pretty filigrees. Orchestrating the album’s finely honed poise is Winter’s own trick of the light – an imagining of what could be real. What makes this record great, though, is that it feels as though Winter comes to you with it, humbled by the magnitude in music’s potential and possibly his own.

Two, Three: Tara Cunningham: Improvising UK guitarist Tara Cunningham’s Two, Three has the charm of feeling casually wrought while subtly administering to a state of disquiet to make it anything but easy. Cunningham – who also plays in longtime neo-jazz upstarts Red Snapper – loves to cross signals on this new release until they make their own beguiling sense. Calmly and smartly, these pieces vibe on stuttered guitar processing (Oren Ambarchi’s early solo works are a touchpoint to my ears) with the tingling angularity that echoes the melodic heft in Derek Bailey’s playing, beaming through the glitched static and tangled textures. There’s a modesty in Cunningham’s approach, but it’s the wryness that pokes through at many turns that really marks this work - locking in its curious, engaging spirit.

Paper Gum – Loris S Sarid: Loris S Sarid is growing by getting smaller. Spontaneously recorded late last year and unvarnished by the absence of mastering, each piece gently radiates across a palette of slow, gestural movements that fold into one another like a fleeting but beautiful moment. Sarid’s sense of air and space draws a delicate line reminiscent of golden-era Japanese environmental music - Inoyama Land and Hiroshi Yoshimura come to mind—disarming in its graceful arc. Happily, Sarid has launched a new imprint with his partner, Spritz Editions, to accommodate more of the serendipity nestled within Paper Gum.

Circular Falls – Poppy H: While his previous works have traded in a curious space between politesse and discord – music for unsettled interiors – this set of lap harp improvisations from the prolific British artist falls more squarely and deeply into the abyssal. The mood of Circular Falls is brittle, to the point where the lap harp’s strings feel they might snap. Yet, as with all of H’s releases, there is a piercing sense of dignity anchoring its melancholy, one that, while not as cracked or raw, echoes the idiosyncratic drive and will at the core of Jandek’s work. And similarly, Poppy H feels compelled to record the truth of his living present – one that doesn’t need a name, but must be mapped in sound.

forever para siempre - ezmeralda: Bogotá producer Nicolás Vallejo’s fourth album is a set of single live takes, guided by chance and intuition as he explores conflicting emotions through noise and melody. It’s a vast and frequently traversed space, and Vallejo approaches it with minimal gesturing to slide away from the dramatic arcs too often typifying that combination. Grainy, lo-fi, and lumbering, these pieces’ warm pulses are dampened by enshrouding static. It may sound like a grim ride, but through the harshness of elements, Vallejo kindles an undercurrent of fading ecstasy, similar to William Basinski’s trademark decaying recede. This could be a real-time processing of intimacy’s presence in our personal sphere – at once natural, fleeting, veiled, and just beyond full reach.

⊚ ⧂⫯ ☌ - goo: I’m welling up behind rose-tinted glasses listening to this one, cast back to any number of share houses - lying with friends on fluffed carpet, always the colour of rucked oatmeal — certain we were mainlined into the future of music, so the dishes could wait. Transport yourself to a veritable fucking 2000s Narnia, where post-rock moves in a slow dance dissolve with glitched textures, pitching up like a jazz ballad drifting into Pole’s laptop software. It echoes the more smudged melodic constructs of claire rousay and more eaze, especially when pop culture references curl out like fingers from under the sea. And extending the aqueous metaphors, its warm, watery feel delivers it from arch affect, grounding it in homespun comfort - a steadying compass for its unbound tenor.

(I can’t explain the gap between the Bandcamp link and the text)

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