lost in a sea of sound

Jacken Elswyth brings us the sixth installment from Betwixt & Between Tapes with the now standard split between two artists. Actually number six has three artists, Jacken Elswyth on the first side and Ryan Eyers on the flip, Mark Stevenson sings while drone plays on the haunting song titled "The Caravan" making three contributions to this recording.

Beautiful renditions and beguiling sublime improvisations or beguiling sublime renditions and beautiful improvisations, the arrangement of these adjectives works for everything Jacken does. Betwixt & Between 6 opens with "Lone Prairie" and then falls into the magical drone of "The Caravan". The first piece embodying vibrancy and technique from a century of banjo playing, but  Jacken still adding unique grandeur. Near the end, the strings quietly conclude leaving the drone of a hurdy-gurdy that transitions into Mark Stevenson's "The Caravan". This majestically sung song tells the story of …

Strong synthesizer currents producing smoothed out grooves, your thoughts will flow like mercury. Listen to the sites along this journey, hear the rumblings of a haunted house, tributes to the remains of a closed family business, a grove of pines trees with rows flickering as we speed along, the Frank Lloyd Wright home nestled in the hill side. Sadnessorzzz11one fuses this landscape together. Along the way, sonic radiance from both the sun and moon, shadows cast in both day and night. Stereo sounds stretched like taffy then balled up and consumed. Mysterious voices whispering nothing and everything. And the nostalgia, notes like sporadic photos appearing from our youth, casting us back into vintage synth. As these images dissolve, future sounds grabbing shirt hems to pull us forward.

Sadnessorzzz11one is a collage of many melodic vignettes. An hour of sounds divided on two sides of a cassette. Adderall Canyonly is very astute with how everything goes together. These recordings were ma…

A few days ago, in the new working from home environment, the sounds of Beacon began to fill the room. There is is an interesting thought about music and working, do they go together or should they go together? The clothes we choose to wear to work, are they the same as the clothes we go out to diner in? When we combine what is held as fun or beautiful with work, does it start to blur and become the routine monotony waiting every weekday? This is just an idea in general, there are exceptions of wonderful jobs out there that transcend the nine to five office space. Those jobs might not fit into this analogy. Listening to Beacon though, while working, did not feel right. The beauty created by Jayson Gerycz, Jen Powers and Matthew J. Rolin, should be kept separate, held in a special place. Their sounds help transcend the consciousness to where it longs to go. Using Beacon for background music at work is like painting your windows black and using florescent lights instead of natural sunl…

At the end of the day, when tiredness meets relaxed creativity, how is one direction facilitated and not the other? A pillow or an influx of thought, each holding rewards. Matthew J. Rolin creates this sonic parallax. Music filled with an unwinding timbre of dreams and sleep, then with a slight bend in listening perspective, pure energizing caffeinated grandeur. Ohio is special, occupying vast stretches of sonic landscape for timeless revolutions of sun and stars. Sounds exemplifying cool mountain valleys in the morning and still summer beaches in the dark night.

The fact Ohio is only five tracks and less than thirty minutes is another duality worth thought. Initially the desire for this composition to be longer is the first go to, then after listening, the number of tracks and content within seems decidedly astute. Matthew J. Rolin balances diversity and a fluid flow of guitar style in a length of time that maintains peak interest. Maybe there is another reason, but the idea of a pur…

The Kendal Mintkcake or TKM likes programs and units of measure. Maybe this corresponds to more than just the initials of TKM, an acronym of the same being Tonne Kilometer. This is a measure of freight carried by mode of transport. The new composition (always in a straight line, from center to edge) is a project for and about compact disc. These sounds are randomly selected, measured and then separated into units of ten. The process reads like code and fortunately TKM has performed and explained this sequence in a manner non-programmers will understand. In the end, after the rules, there is a human element centering around the final processing. The amazing feature is the thought, very little processing was actually added.

Starting with one hundred compact discs (always in a straight line, from center to edge) is purposely mutated into something new. There's a French word for this, Bricolage " the process of improvisation in the human endeavor". TKM  has even captured the…

The depth always remains a mystery. An edge high above holding beauty in a precarious cradle. Mercurial Horizon exemplifies these aspects. A line separating energy rushing towards us and the unknown expanse on the far side. Two qualities of feelings or emotions presented in proverbial stereo, one landscape revealing itself directly in front. A darkness surrounds these harmonies, with radiant beams of burning tonal particles slicing through in unrecognizable patterns. These thoughts revolving around a ponderous weight of true loneliness. An aural journey with a single conscious in the emptiness.

Matt Shoemaker has composed an hour of sound divided between two tracks. The titles simply Mercurial Horizon One and Two. The composition begins with a reflection of sounds from distant celestial objects. Like a mildly disturbed asteroid belt, rotating masses slowly spinning, then gently colliding with both smaller and larger brothers. These movements creating dark shadows brilliantly pierced b…

There is an absolute certainty the sounds of DC_33.33 are completely unique and escape all comparison. Vela Abridge is pure digital havoc. Anti rhythms of sound ricocheting in a euphoria devoid of all patterns. Clicks, bleeps, scratches, beeps, all escaping a tear in what most understand as the sonic continuum. Microcosmic static amplified beyond its infinitesimal existence, now heard in it's massive disarray. The only word to feebly attempt to describe these musings is chaos, but this is only because understanding is still elusive.

DC_33.33 is the project of Chicago based Dave Gabriel. Vela Abridge is a twelve track compilation clocking in just over thirty minutes. Song titles creatively connect, tiny hooks for these energetic recondite sounds, "Debassed Zipper", "Choose Your Own Adventure and Get Maimed on p.12" and "Eat at Squarp's" are just a few. The compilation name is interesting as well, Vela Abridge. Vela, the plural of velum, a membrane,…

In the German Army jungle, there is always a pair of eyes on you. Deep in this dense and shadowed under story, rhythms become the only bearing for direction. But their cadence arrives with the life of all things both harmonious and cacophonous. A squawk, screech or howl, amplified by the intensity of knowing most anything can be beautifully lethal. A precipice seen trough the vegetation is the place Animals Remember Human rest. Listening for all conscious movement, then applying a sonic recipe for mesmerizing fascination.

Animals Remember Human is another mind warping massive selection of German Army fineness. Eighteen tracks with only a handful longer than three minutes. These selections are filled with the complete spectrum of aural euphoria, pointed melodies with poison tips, hallucinogenic spores of weighty accord and ancient calls of the avian dinosaurs. Animals Remember Human lets musical genres decompose and disintegrate back into the terra firma. These nutrients giving energy …

In the remote corners of the consciousness, thoughts are left undisturbed for entire lifetimes. These memories, feelings or ideas carry though earthly existence, like unseen foundations of a world built around us. Kyle Landstra pulls energy from these recesses, sounds slowly coming into focus, depths greater than we can understand. The connection Allay builds upon is exploring the most basic tranquility within all of us. The peacefulness we carry with us through each life, sometime becoming lost in a world of responsibilities and worries.

Allay is a forty minute offering with two side long tracks in perfect balance. The first titled "Bearing Lightness" opens with an aural stir of the primordial pool. Seemingly devoid of life, closer listening inspection brings the beauty of the formation of stromatolites from the Precambrian period. Kyle Landstra's sounds patiently grow, each new millennium adding another aspect of wisely created aural magnificence. But there is never a …

Hot Lonely Singles shows Cop Funeral's ability to build beautiful ambient pieces then tear them down with sonic disruption. Or in the order of this release, the reverse is a better chronology. This collection of both unpublished and a few new tracks, is a wonderful look at the intense diversity this project can traverse.

Drenched in the sonic wall. The consciousness transfixed by an audible barrage of both rhythmic and droning locust swarms. Hot Lonely Singles burns at napalm intensity, lengthy tracks giving zero relief for stalwart durations. The opening selection "Shit Relocator" from the B side of Pain, is a mountain of crushing weight. Rhythms begin to build with tormented vocals accompanying, another foray into something rather wicked. With subtle ease "Beyond Gone" is thrown in, only an exorcism will get this out of your head. There are few safe spots on the first side of this collection of tracks. So much amorphous industrial mayhem, so thick and swam…

Sounds transporting us through past and future decades. Spirit Exchange rest in the nexus of time, where genres collide and fuse into something beyond, melodies glistening with psychedelic sparkles. Lazily laying on green grass in the park, these inflections have always been here, while beats and effects materializing from future rhythms. Spirit Exchange is pure delicate fashioned creativity. A nostalgia kept vibrant and strong, simultaneously an element of new and absolutely fresh.

These tracks have incredible fluidity, an innocence propelled by love, growth building towards wisdom. Fifteen selections in total slowly unfolding under a fully articulated length. The first track titled "Let's Be Kids" seems to sum up the general attitude. But the context of what unfolds in the writing of each song, are experiences of life past the point of being young. Written, played and sung with care and warmth, there is a prevalent underlying lament back to the pureness of thing in a w…