Taylor Deupree - Snow (Dusk, Dawn) (12k)

Last years Weather and Worn was a key record in shaping my musical year, irresitable droney experimentalism in bite size pieces, impossible not to listen to again and again. And although he boasts a large back catalogue and impeccable taste as head of 12k and Line i've yet to find anything by him that's quite matched up to Weather and Worn's magical warmth, until ironically now with the coldly entitled "Snow (Dusk, Dawn)".

Another masterpiece much in the same manner as the aforementioned, inspired by the late winter snow of 2009 and part of a multimedia project that you can read about below.

The way he combines surface noise with dreamy rotating drones is near perfect as the track rotates and swells gently never straying too far from the early sounds but developing enough to keep the interest whlist still not forcing its way to the forefront, perfect music to relax or read to. The kind of outcome you'd expect should Jana Winderen have bumped into either Collin Olan or Rutger Zuydervelt during their respective experiments with ice but ten times better.

What The Label Said :

please note: Snow (Dusk, Dawn) will only be available during the opening night of Taylor Deupree's Unseen photography show in Tokyo on April 15th. Any copies remaining from this night will then be available in 12k's online shop on a first-come-first-serve basis. About a month following the opening of Unseen the musical portion of this edition will be made available through our digital distribution network.

Transience, ephemerality. There is beauty in things that don’t last. Taylor Deupree’s Snow (Dusk, Dawn), a multimedia project incorporating sound and photography, is based around 63 photographs taken with expired polaroid film. This particular film produces images cast with other-worldly blueish hues and almost immediately begin to fade; losing color, to deep browns, and then finally, within 24 hours after being shot, to complete black.

Deupree’s work is often inspired by nature, particularly the winterscapes near his home and studio in rural New York. With the polaroid film in hand, which he knew would capture only a fleeting image, he shot images during the first heavy snowfall of the winter of 2009, at dusk, in the setting sun; nothing was to last, the snow, the image, the day. The next morning, barely at sunrise, he set out again to finish the film, in a dawn that wasn’t going to last.

As quickly as he could, following each photo session, Deupree scanned the polaroid prints, capturing the first white snow in ghostly blue before the pictures faded to black. Each of these scanned images is printed and displayed next to its original, black polaroid counterpart in the package along with the cd. Each copy of this edition of 63 is thus rendered unique, each with a different print and polaroid.

For the music portion of the project there is also contrast, transience, and decay. A fragile melodic loop, distressed by surface noise, struggles to keep its repetitive flow over a quiet and languid 18 minutes as it subtly, but constantly, loses ground and eventually becomes fragmented and falls away amongst the elements that surrounded it.

Snow (Dusk, Dawn) captures the essence of what much of Deupree’s work is about: imperfection, time, and memory. He uses both high- and low-tech means of creating rich works that scrape away at the surface of digital sterility. Avoiding the con- trolled manipulation offered by computers he prefers natural and unpredictable processes to add depth and texture to this work. Outdated film, cheap cameras, dust and leaking light effect his photographs while guitars, found percussion, old analog synthesizers and recordings of falling snow provide the soundtrack to a moment in time that comes and goes like dawn.

This edition is being presented at the NADiff Gallery in Tokyo, Japan on April 15th as part of Deupree's Polaroid photography show, Unseen.

The edition contains: 3" CD - Original Polaroid print - Color print of pre-faded Polaroid image - Letterpress card.

A PDF file of the entire edition can be viewed HERE.

Ekca Liena

Ekca Liena - Drones Between Homes (Under the Spire) / Orb Night (Phantom Channel)

I've for some time been enthralled by the thought of Ekca Liena, a regular poster and self promoter on the After the Post Rock Forum. You can however only trust so many reviews especially when every new drone artist i discover is described as being similar to Stars of the Lid, Tim Hecker and Fennesz, just as the lazy reviewer describes all post rock as being a little but Mogwai, a little bit of Godspeed with a hint of EITS and so on. Whether it be the trick of the small distros to drum up interest and in turn sales or whether they're just that braindead i don't know. What I do know is that Ekca Liena is as great as i had expected. For some unknown reason i had assumed Ekca to be a girl, maybe an heir to Danielle Baquet Longs throne, as it is, Ekca Liena is simply a moniker for the work of Dan McKenzie.


Instead of sounding like everything else, Ekca Liena has a genuinely original and personal sound, it reminds me of Textile Ranch slowed down and intricately taken to pieces, like the cogs that turn inside a pocket watch or the gentle and elegant movements of a clockwork ballerina ,so the notes fall, delicate and graceful, mixing music box melodies with drones so lovely they would cause the sun to rise all by themselves should they be given half a chance.

In places you can hear echoes of Colleen and on the excellent Strange Dusk an ode to Ben Frost's ability to restrain sound from crossing over into brutality but getting as close as possible without touching, can be heard in the deep throbs that bring the track to a finale.

And so it is with a plethora of releases that Ekca Liena has jumped into the limelight, having wowed those in the know last year with the now sold out but soon to be rereleased Slow Music For Rapid Eye Movement, Ekca returns with a release on two of the hottest experimental labels around currently (three it would appear, as he also has a new album on the Dead Pilot label), first up Drones Between Homes on the excellent Under The Spire label, two tracks that stay just shy of 15 minutes, dreamy and reflective in manner, however the real treat is the four track Orb Night and the even more excellent Phantom Channel label, four songs that twinkle like stars in the night sky, drifting like an owl swooping on unsuspecting prey, majestically beautiful yet slightly eerie and spine tinglingly awe inspiring. The title track, Orb Night, itself is simply epic, drifting between twinkles and dark ambient yet never sounding tired or outstaying its welcome over its 20 minute duration. One to watch for sure, hopefully he won't go too Machinefabriek on us.

Ekca Liena - Orb Night

Tom White - Sight See / A Well-Known Phrase

Tom White - Sight See (Smallfish)
- A Well-Known Phrase (Under the Spire)

It'll be at the end of the year when people are moaning that it’s been another awful year for music when i pipe up as always with a hundred and one recommendations, pretty close to the top of my list though will be Tom White.

The Ambient/Drone/Experimental genre seems to have an endless supply of new artists with endless supplies of material, many of the forerunners of the genre having numerous releases each year, Lawrence English, Taylor Deupree, Machinefabriek. On first impression it’s an incredibly limited field, most songs are barely there, notes decomposed and shredded, recycled and made new, drifting along seemlessly and yet it's the genre that has really grabbed me by the ears this year. It has an ability to pull you in, the wrap itself around your very lobes, the quietly seduce you into soft and dreamy sleep. There are many experts in this field, a number of whom I’ve already mentioned and a handful more that will be strong contenders for album of the year, Molly Berg + Stephen Vitiello if you need names. Right now though, Tom White rules my world. 8 months through the year and two delightful releases so far on a pair of the most reliable labels out there.

First up the wonderfully short Sight See release from Smallfish. All too often i find myself put off by massively long ambient tracks, albeit psychological and maybe due to more than a little Last.fm OCD. How refreshing it is to see tracks of less than five minutes and on a couple of tracks less than two, beautiful pieces mixing both drone and elements of noise while never outstaying their welcome.


I was more than surprised to see the level of quality surpassed on the follow up on up and coming underground label Under the Spire. A Well-Known Phrase is nothing less than a treat, more gritty and more experimental and featuring a healthy nod towards perhaps one of my favourite artists of the genre Ben Frost, balancing the excursions into noise with delicately growing soundscapes.

An album is expected before the end of the year, one can only look forward with eager anticipation.

Automobile, Swift - Enemy, Enemy

Automobile, Swift - Enemy, Enemy

Another day and so it would seem another great net release. I read with eager anticipation the press release to the ridiculously prolific Machinefabriek that his new release(one of them anyway) IJspret that claimes "Rutger Zuydervelt turns his ear towards that most fertile of creative themes for the microsound artist: winter. Ijspret was inspired by the timbral properties of ice, and features contact microphone recordings of all manner of frosty textures and interactions with the frozen ground, from the noise made by ice skaters to the strange commotion of the defrosting process." i expected extreme beauty and the sound of winter to be caught graciously, i was disappointed as i tend to be by his releases, apart from the lovely Drawn.
Automobile, Swift on the other hand capture the sound of winter, the crispy crunch of frozen snow that paves the streets of England right now, so well and without trying. Slow Ocean is all crackles and crunching set to whirring swells of drone and distant seagull calls. The rest of the five track EP is of a similarly high quality and far more worthy of your attention than any of the seven new releases that Rutger Zuydervalt is likely to release this week.

Automobile, Swift - Enemy Enemy zip