Michael Potter - Rain Song

Back through the channels of guitar tones, thoughts slipping to the continual undercurrent of musical beauty. The notion solidifies concerning the gifted talents of Michael Potter, connecting the nostalgia within sounds to a creative path of all things new. Rain Song is the well worn comfortable place to sit, where feelings of warmth flush through the skin and the entire spirit is charged in delight.

The first side consists of one track, the cassette title, called Rain Song. Slowly growing melodies that hang like Spanish moss in the serene bliss. A well planned crescendo awaits, but the patience to get there is perfectly timed. This also gives a moment to begin the understanding how steadfast Michael Potter's techniques are. Using a construct of many facets, usually highly guitar driven, the diversity is significant while the overall vibe is impeccably fluid. Rain Song follows a path like all afternoon shower experiences, unparalleled beauty coming unexpected and dispersing without fanfare or notice. Only now becoming a long thought asking to be retraced.

The second side is filled with three live tracks and starts off with a mood change. The first two selections emphasizing guitar, bass and drums with Michael, Web Hughes and Steven Ledbetter. Like a mini Penguin Cafe Orchestra that morphs into a grooved out blues band. The only difference in the mutation, these three musicians achieve the genuine aura without launching over the top. The last track is Rain Song played solo and live by Michael, an abbreviated version of the first side. One thing of note from the first side, the string tone prompted thoughts of the guitar tone on the 1984 song Real Life by Tones on Tail. This is a big stretch and the music is nothing alike, but the song following Real Life on the Pop album is titled Rain. This is probably just amusing to me....

Released on cassette by Already Dead Records And Tapes in an edition of one hundred and fifty. Less than twenty percent of this run is currently available and with good reason. Rain Song is excellent and these sounds are both sublime and radiant. Also the cassette version includes the B side which you can not hear on bandcamp.-

Links
Already Dead Tapes site - facebook - bandcamp
Michael Potter - bandcamp - facebook

Coven Tree / Tadzio Split

A few months ago Tadzio's The Sick Room was on the repeated listening plan. This is an incredible well composed album, and describing it was on the list.... But there is a heaviness to it that a short synopsis of words can not rise too, at least the efforts here at Lost in a Sea of Sound. Would like to go back and try again, but the sadness is real, the words clear and exacting, and the instrumentation pulls on your thoughts. To all involved with The Sick Room, incredible work, thank you for fueling emotions and contemplation.

This is a side tracked opening for the new split cassette by Coven Tree and Tadzio, but there was no way to start if the earlier body of work was not addressed. And with this touched upon history, Tadzio finds themselves at the core of another body of similar work. Folk, classical and experimental fused into an entirely new medium. The balance on this split, between both projects and sides they contribute, is the most striking feature. One side all instrumental and the other music and poetry caught between storytelling and song.

Coven Tree fills side A with an ambient pull through the centuries. Classical instruments, viola and cello, combine with keyboards to create a drone like atmosphere. The first track "No Land" floats like a wisp of a cloud across lush green mountain views. The sky is grey and white, keyboards in rhythm with intermittent falling rain. The heaviness of the moment is pierced by timeless factors of beauty, each existing for reasons yet to be fully understood. Maybe this is key to understanding the two artist making up Coven Tree, Alexia Kauffman and Hannah Burris have found the sonic pathway to a world of music shrinking away. A bright radiant point on an aural landscape of forgotten composers and the souls of incredible artists.

Side B holds two tracks by Tadzio. There is some similarity to The Sick Room, maybe this is a continuation along certain veins of interest or artists involved. Either way, Tadzio is extremely adept at creating their unique experimental folk like sounds. With the opening track "Death and the Lady", a timeless story of trying to bargain with Death unfolds. "Give me time in the light and air" is all the Lady asks for, but Death has heard this before. Even when offered earthly goods include castles and crystal stairs, Death is only interested in the soul of the moment.  The Lady realizes she can only leave words of advice, "Oh Lady's make much of your time, here lies a young girl cut down in her prime". Tadzio weaves the sonic threads of this telling tapestry with modern creativity. Their conceptualization of instrumentation fits impeccably to the stories being told, songs being sung. The second song extends reaching branches and touches another genre entirely. "Absence" has a pop hook that repeats in thoughts, "I'm doing alright, how you doing?, I'm doing alright". Doing good after listening to this split...

A lot to say for four tracks on a cassette. Very deserving though, balanced beauty all the way through. This BLIGHT. Records release is still in the pre-order phase. The scheduled release date will be near the beginning of the third week in August. Not sure how many in this edition, one hundred is a number BLIGHT. records has used for cassettes before. The opening Coven Tree track up on bandcamp and is currently listenable. If you like it, know the entire release is that good.

Links

BLIGHT. Records - bandcamp - facebook

Tadzio - facebook - bandcamp

Coven Tree - facebook - bandcamp

Sex Funeral - All Teeth

The aural haze is thick. Somewhere in the mist a cacophonous barge of sounds churns the murk. A cargo of harmony or clamor soon to be unfurled. The sonic contents slowly explode, a carnival of mysterious fragments begin their arc like path. Some listeners find themselves transfixed while others flee in haste. Sex Funeral does not take sides, these sounds emanate from talents spread far, this is a creative implosion. A return to a conscious core, a place where concord is chewed apart by All Teeth.

Three years ago Lost in a Sea of Sound described Sex Funeral's - Eradicator. Much has surfaced by the project during this lengthy duration. Line ups and instruments have changed although the menagerie of anti patterns still persists. The one constant connecting All Teeth and Eradicator together are all sounds emerging from a droning nexus. A sonic dimension that traverses space in one direction. Investigation into theses origins results in only darkness. Percussion, keyboards and saxophone blurring in and out of clarity. A hypnotic ruckus, debris from the cosmic droning dirge of decades past. These are the sounds of Matt Crowe and Bob Bucko Jr. Both artists with a ship's hold full of experience and projects. Together as Sex Funeral now, All Teeth is a tempered discharge of non conforming erudition. A place that could easily be overwhelming, but is held together by the beauty of patience.

Released on the Lincoln, Nebraska label Gay Hippie Vampire in June. The label used recycled tapes for this edition and the run is very limited. Read on discogs there are only thirty in all. You can currently order a copy from the label's bandcamp page or Sex Funeral's bandcamp page.

Links
Sex Funeral - bandcamp - facebook
Gay Hippie Vampire - bandcamp  - facebook - twitter

Rutger Hauser - The Swim

Traversing a cacophonous gathering of harmony and beats with an such ease and style, The Swim smoothly lays down it's own idiom in music. Like the flight of a dragon fly, unpredictably swift until coming to rest, then a transitory moment for showing it's beauty. Rutger Hauser simulates this effect in sound, a seemingly infinite amount of sonic pieces swirling in the consciousness. A melodic juncture decisively blossoms in the mind only to be prompted away by some creatively new sonic passage. The entire aural flight, absent of any path, unstable yet melodically stout and fortified.

The Swim evades genres, a mystifying achievement since the entire listen is acutely harmonious. There are comparisons lurking in the past richness of creativity. Two tracks from such totally different worlds raised a brow. The last selection on the first side "The Swim / Av Brúnni við Streymin" has a definite feel from the ominously beautiful 1986 album by SPK, Zamia Lehmanni - Songs Of Byzantine Flowers. Flip the record and the first track "On the Rotifer Conchilus Volvox / Golmansskor", has the playfulness and statesmanship of 2005 album by The Books - Lost and Safe. This contiguity to the past is well received since many of these forays on The Swim defy all comparisons. Like the second offering "Hestur and Koltur / Hestur og Koltur", samples of spoken word in some hallucinogenic viscous medium. Signals trough dimensions, sounds of craft and conjecture. This is the way much of the second side plays out and finishes up. A warm and unrehearsed theatrical vignette, melting into bowed strings played with beats full of whimsy. The last selection, "Faroes 01 _ Nólsoy, looking North / Rúnarsteinur í Sandavágskirkju", is the most desolate and introspective piece on The Swim album. Almost drone like but more in line with the obsequies of all things coming to an end. The six musicians making up the framework of Rutger Hauser have completely become one aural landscape. From their wobbly percussion laden peculiarities in the opening track, this journey engages thoughts the entire way through. Nothing expected and everything hoped for, The Swim is just simply extremely well done.

Co released by labels Adaadat from the United Kingdom and Tutl from the Faroes. The sextet, Rutger Hauser is from South-East London and they spent time in the Faroe Islands to record The Swim. Creatively assembled and outstanding sonic fidelity, this lp sounds beautiful. Not sure how many editions there are but they are currently available with a recent release date of July 1st.

Links
Rutger Hauser site - bandcamp
ADAADAT site - facebook - twitter
TUTL site - facebook - twitter

Shumoto / Rambutan - The Migration To Warm Rivers

The sonic path winds down through the earth. Here the rituals of compression and expansion unfold, there are no timely patterns. Rock and sediment groan and sigh as pressures and heat cascade through them. These sounds are unnatural for listeners outside the process, but the primordial beauty they contain pulls on thoughts and beckons for understanding. Two projects, Shumoto and Rambutan, have been combined together like metamorphic rock. Their sounds producing one full length record, The Migration To Warm Rivers, sparkling with the gleam of calcite crystals.

Shumoto is the project of Jefferson Pitcher. His extensive experience and well honed creativity allows him knowledge similar to rock formations, patience. There is nothing hurried on Shumoto's two tracks. Guitar notes clear and heavy, slowly emitted from the depths of consciousness. The tempo is almost glacial in movement. Jefferson adds poetry from the writings of Ben Jahn (Dowser's Prayer), creating a complex assortment of aural features. Both guitar and spoken word tangle in patterns like Celtic art. As this pushes towards completion, Jefferson appends the entire composition with folk like primitive guitar playing. A knotty en devour, with waves of heaviness that are difficult to convey.

Most attuned with side A, Rambutan continues with massively lucid guitar work. Three tracks in total with divisions dissolved in the whole. Unlike the first side, Eric Hardiman's work sheds context and finds flowing yet disjointed dreamlike space. Undertones of drone like oceans, ominous when first heard, then peacefully distant as listeners continue afloat. The depths of these sounds are still beyond understanding, but the surface is radiated with both light and life. A mesmerizing sonic output filled with alien like warble eventually dissipating into the mist. And from this haze sounds an infinite reverberations of undisturbed guitar notes. The final adieu, a much welcomed tranquil envelopment as this substantial split has filled our meditations.

A beautiful vibrant blue vinyl housed inside handmade record jackets. Offered by the Lost Forest label as 002. Difficult to find anything online line regarding the label or what 001 is, if there is an 001. A small mystery that hopefully someone can clarify. Another cool note... Lost in a Sea of Sound has listened to and described The Migration To Warm Rivers before it's release date of July 14th. If you have read this far then be sure remember there are only one hundred of these created. They are available as a pre-order from the Rambutan bandcamp page of from Jefferson Pitcher's site.

Links
Rambutan - bandcamp
Jefferson Pitcher site - bandcamp
Lost Forest Records

Daniel Guillén - Inner Vision

In every moment of existence there are striking forms of beauty. As our lives move so quickly, the alluring excellence surrounding us gets blurred. The smallest details are filled with countless years of evolving and eroding. These processes in long production, now at simultaneous points waiting to be noticed. Most times the gears keep turning, life goes in it's direction while the radiation of energy fueling the world burns in silence. Maybe the title to Daniel Guillén's new composition "Inner Vision" has meaning to these thoughts. What is for certain, the music Daniel has created aurally illustrates these ruminations in full distinction.

When the time comes to describe ambient heavies, many listens have been gathered in order to hopefully connect. Slowing down, relinquishing surrounding responsibilities, hearing the beauty as the world moves from a blur into focus. These six selections are extensions of an infinite amount of amazing details in every life. A cosmic synthesizer in tune with the galactic medium of tones. Daniel's timbre and pace is the common tongue for consciousnesses at higher vibrations. The dialogue concerning the clarity of love and it's ability to bring everyone to elevated paths. These are some weighted thoughts for music seemingly drifting into the ethereal. But if we can not try to understand why artists like Daniel create compositions such as Inner Vision, then how can a true connection be properly established. The transcendence is within these notes and we are fortunate to be able to listen.

Released on the label Muzan Editions out of Nara, Japan. Not sure about the number in this run, but Muzan Editions used to be around one hundred. Daniel Guillén has other compositions under the project name Lunaria. Lost in a Sea of Sound described All Is Dream a few year back. This cassette was on the Sounds of Dawn label and is now sold out. Most Muzan Editions releases do not long, Inner Vision will follow this path.

Links
Daniel Guillén - bandcamp - facebook
Muzan Editions -bandcamp - facebook - twitter

Lunden - s/t

With volume dialed up and the record speed at forty five, Lunden will flush your consciousness. There is no tranquil ground as this composition gets going. Instant sonic armageddon, the annihilation of all things melodic. But this is a collection of tracks, there is purpose in beginning with this thoughtful assault. Step back and put your ears to the Lunden furnace again. These two musicians have much more in their aural armament. Maybe starting off by paralyzing listeners is the plan all along.

A total of five tracks divided across eighteen minutes goes by lightning quick. Each side of the vinyl opens with an energized noise bomb. Sharply edged guitar chords hammered with a meteor shower of dense percussion. The opening track includes deranged monastic vocal harmonizing, like a brief prayer being called on to whatever sacrifice this music is being played to. Juxtaposed with the cacophony of side A's "Screen Walking" and side B's "bestanden", is the fact Lunden composes a startlingly well rounded record. The remaining selections are from another place. Raw and completely pristine, these sounds shine with rhythmic creativity.  The second track "endlessity" is perfectly balanced, percussion as if its there in the room with you, while the strings resonate like insects in your mind. Strategically placed is "Ultraprisme", a drone like wall of hypnotizing signals, a favorite so far. Following at the end is "driftwood", showing skillful patience and tying the entire audio journey with a farewell knot.

Lunden is Emil Palme and Lasse Bækby Buch from Copenhagen, Denmark. The 10" vinyl is released by the the label Abstract Tits, also in Copenhagen. From a little bit of internet research, not really sure how to order a copy. The links to Lunden and the label are below. Maybe send a message and let them know you would like a copy. Before going that far, listen to this record a few times. It grows and satisfies.

Links
Lunden - facebook - bandcamp
abstract tits site - facebook