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Good Stuff House
A Zelienople side project featuring Matt Christensen and Mike Weis, the latter also of Kwaidan, and Scott Tuma recorded the material that comprises this album originally for a CD-R in 2006 and have been rather quiet since. Reissued with a wider scope and presentation, the seven untitled pieces that make up this album are in league with their other projects, yet have a hazy, singular edge all their own.
Awash in reverb, much of the instrumentation used on this LP is somewhat indistinct, aside from the focus many songs have on acoustic guitar that gives a certain folk feel to the music.The second song, for example, puts the focus on the instrument, casting the guitar notes amidst a sea of reverb and open, glorious space, occasionally drifting into a western-esque twang and sometimes meeting up with almost sounds like a sitar as a very different counterpoint.
The third piece continues the theme but reconstructs it into the most diverse, powerful song on the album.Dropping the overt guitar, the droning electronics and synth-like moments of what preceded it become the focus, and with the addition of infrequent, but prominent percussion, it takes on an intense, cinematic quality that builds and builds into its harsher, dissonant conclusion.
The beginning of the second side of the LP retreats from this grandiose conclusion, slowly spreading out as sparse and fragmented, with clinking noises and what sounds like a bass guitar leading off.While stripped back to the barest essentials, everything is obscured in an intentional, opium smoke haze of sound and mood.The sixth untitled piece goes even further back, leaving just the most basic of acoustic guitars and a bleak, dark bed of muddy ambience.
The second side is closed with another climactic piece, this time what sounds like strings (synthetic or natural) resonating in a cavernous expanse, with blurping synths popping up here and there as a more forceful outburst.Vocals are present, but buried and effected to lack any clear lyrical meaning.It is complex, but has a distant, organic feel, and the entire song seems to slowly drift apart as it concludes, like oil diffusing in an oceanic expanse.
Like its sepia tinged abstract cover art, this record from Good Stuff House is shrouded in a hazy, mysterious fog.Distant and obtuse, but with a warm, inviting nature, it is an enigma that begs to be solved, but is not the most simple thing to understand.
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