- Anthony D'Amico
- Albums and Singles
On this latest full-length, the perennially eclectic and boldly adventurous duo of Drew Daniel and MC Schmidt take a break from mining weird and esoteric source material to focus their energies on paying homage to underheard Polish composer and Krzysztof Penderecki associate Bogusław Schaeffer. Matmos were given full access to work their mindbending magic on Schaeffer's complete recorded works and the resultant album is as characteristically unpredictable and hard-to-categorize as ever: instead of remixing or reinterpreting the Polish composer's work, Matmos instead took "tissue samples of DNA from past compositions" and "mutated them into entirely new organisms that throb with an alien vitality." Put another way, Regards/Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer attempts to create a conversation or bridge between the "utopian 1960s Polish avant-garde" and "the contemporary dystopian cultural moment." That is certainly intriguing and fertile terrain for a Matmos album, but the resultant songs wound up somewhere even more delightful and confounding than usual, often approximating a collision between fragmented exotica, kosmische, and a Kubrickian sci-fi nightmare. Naturally, that will be very appealing territory for most long-time Matmos fans, as this album is an especially inspired "everything and the kitchen sink" tour de force of quite disparate stylistic threads woven together in playfully disorienting and mischievous fashion by an talented international cast of virtuousos, eccentric visionaries, and plunderphonic magpies.
My knowledge of Bogusław Schaeffer's work is quite minimal, which makes sense, given that he is not particularly well known outside of Poland. However, I have previously encountered fragments of his ouevre through Bôłt's "Polish Radio Experimental Studio" reissue campaign (as well as an unknowing exposure via David Lynch's Inland Empire). Fittingly, Bôłt founder Michał Mendyk was the spark behind this endeavor (as well as providing some presumably much-needed translation assistance). To Mendyk's credit, reshaping and cannibalizing Schaeffer's work turned out to be an ideal project for Daniel and Schmidt to throw themselves into, as the end result is quintessential Matmos. Granted, the duo's characteristically morbid and/or gleefully ridiculous sound sources are absent here, but Regards checks a lot of other boxes on my personal checklist for an inspired Matmos album (kitsch colliding with high art, rigorous scholarship and compositional vision colliding with plunderphonic mischief, etc.). The opening "Resemblage" provides a representative window into the album's baseline aesthetic, approximating a squelchy strain of post-modernist exotica that evokes the feeling of being serenaded by an all-cyborg Xavier Cugat Orchestra in a psychedelic cave. My favorite pieces all follow soon after, as Regards boasts quite a killer first half.
In “Cobra Wages Shuffle,” for example, Matmos unleash something akin to mutant electrofunk played with bath toys that later makes surprise detours into deep space horror, android ASMR, and fragmented NWW-style sound collage. Elsewhere, "Few, Far Chaos Bugles" brings in Turkish multi-instrumentalist Ulas Kurugullu for a mindbending melange of Eastern European folk, tenacious typewriter, Martin Denny, and Thirlwell-esque artificial-sounding horn blurts that evokes the feeling of having a psychotic breakdown on a moonlit beach because incomprehensible alien transmissions are being relentlessly beamed into my head. "Flight to Sodom" is yet another hit, capturing Matmos and instrument builder Will Schorre in an unusually poppy mood, as they steer a lurching kickdrum beat and burbling kosmische synths into a Rashad Becker-esque psychotropic bestiary (fitting, given that Becker himself mastered the album). While I do prefer the album's first half to the second, there are not any pieces that miss the mark–only ones that feature a different balance of broken/fragmented avant-gardism and conventionally enjoyable grooves and melodies. As with all Matmos releases, the big caveat is that Regards is an unrepentantly challenging and kaleidoscopic listening experience, but the rampant exotica touches nicely balance the duo's more alienating tendencies to make this one of the more fun and consistently fascinating albums in the duo's oft-difficult discography.
Sounds can be found here.
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- Anthony D'Amico
- Albums and Singles
This is my first deep immersion into Joëlle Vinciarelli & Eric Lombaert's deeply unconventional "free metal" duo, but I have long been a fan of the pair's noise/drone band La Morte Young (as well as Vinciarelli's repeat collaborations with My Cat is an Alien). Notably, there is absolutely nothing recognizably "metal" about this latest release, as the closest kindred spirits are probably outer limits psychonauts like the LAFMS milieu or Borbetomagus. However, even those signposts are inadequate at conveying how far Talweg have descended into their own personal rabbit hole with this album, as these four pieces feel both unstuck in time and decidedly pagan/occult-inspired (which makes sense, given Vinciarelli's passion for collecting unusual and ancient instruments). Further muddying the waters, this album arguably captures the duo in "soundtrack mode," as two of the pieces are early/rehearsal versions of pieces composed for a Monster Chetwynd exhibition, while a third borrows a nursery rhyme from Marcel Hanoun's "Le Printemps" as its central theme. While "rehearsals for an exhibition soundtrack" admittedly does not sound all that appealing on paper, these recordings are quite compelling in reality, as Des tourments si grands often feels like a remarkably inspired and deeply unconventional stab at outsider free jazz. Fans of Vinciarelli's work with MCIAA will definitely want to investigate this one, as it journeys into similarly alien territory, but the addition of Lombaert's killer drumming takes that aesthetic in a far more explosive and visceral direction.
Up Against the Wall, Motherfuckers!
The album is divided into four separate longform pieces that always extend for at least fifteen minutes of shapeshifting psychotropic magic. Picking a favorite is damn near impossible, as every single piece eventually gets somewhere wonderful, but my current feeling is that the closing "où l'on souffre, des tourments si grands que..." is the highlight that best captures the duo at the height of their powers. It initially calls to mind a duet between a free jazz drummer and an orchestra of demonic air raid sirens, but the howling maelstrom is soon further enhanced by the sing-song nursery rhyme at its heart, resulting in something that sounds like a somnambulant French Vashti Bunyan loopingly intoning the same lines over and over again inside a gnarled extradimensional nightmare. Somehow the piece only gets better from there, as a descending chord progression and a stomping, crashing beat take shape as Vinciarelli unleashes a viscerally feral-sounding trumpet solo. Notably, it is the only piece on the album where I can hear any real trace of the pair's metal inspirations, as it feels like a heavy doom metal jam played on the wrong instruments (coupled with a pointed avoidance of all genre tropes, of course). In short, it rules, but the other three songs all come quite close to scaling similarly lofty heights.
In the opener, for example, Talweg approximate an unholy mash-up of ancient pagan bell ceremony, lysergic aviary, supernaturally possessed music box, and a Siren luring me through an ambient fog towards the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks. Elsewhere, "comme une éponge, que l'on plonge" initially kicks off in similar "strangled, uneasily viscous-sounding ceremonial trumpet meets free jazz drumming" territory, but then dissolves into a wonderfully simmering groove of buzzing, psychotropic drones and a skittering, off-kilter beat enlivened with wild, virtuosic fills before reigniting for a gloriously volcanic finale. The remaining piece, "dans un gouffre, plein de soufre," is yet another top-tier mindfuck, gradually evolving from "droning harmonium sea shanty" to "gently undulating ambient/noir-jazz psychedelia" to "roaring extradimensional nightmare storm" en route to an unexpectedly meditative coda that sounds like a train slowly chugging its way through a phantasmagoric landscape of raining crystals. The one caveat, of course, is that this album is quite a challenging, dissonant, and intense ride, but that should be welcome terrain for fans of the duo's other activities and Talweg are extremely fucking good at what they do. It is a real treat to encounter such otherworldly beauty and heady psychedelia delivered with white-knuckled elemental power and masterfully controlled violence.
Sounds can be found here.
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- Anthony D'Amico
- Albums and Singles
Every now and then, I stumble upon a singular artist whose work has somehow managed to remain largely undocumented and entirely under the radar all but the most devout underground music fans. Aaron Taylor Kuffner is the latest visionary to fall into this category, as his Zemi17 project has been around for a quarter century now and he has only just gotten around to releasing his full-length debut. Notably, Gamelatron Bidadari is quite a departure from Zemi17's previous two EPs on The Bunker's house label, as Impressions (2014) and Zipper (2016) were an attempt to integrate Taylor Kuffner's techno past with more natural and timeless sounds originating from his time spent studying gamelan in Indonesia. On this latest release, all traces of Zemi17's dancefloor past have disappeared to showcase another side of Taylor Kuffner's unique artistry: the Gamelatron project that he co-created in 2008, which is billed as "the world’s first fully robotic gamelan orchestra." Since the project's inception, Taylor Kuffner has built more than 70 site-specific kinetic sculptures and provided his signature "immersive, visceral experience" to more than a million people across the globe. The Gamelatron Bidadari captured here is but one of those sculptures and originally debuted as part of an exhibit entitled "No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man" at The Smithsonian's Renwick gallery. While a lot of site-specific installations understandably do not translate terribly well to home listening, this one is a delightful exception, as the resultant recordings feel like an ingenious twist on a timeless favorite, taking traditional gamelan music into an even more loopingly hypnotic direction than usual.
It admittedly took me a few listens to fully warm to Gamelatron Bidadari, as I quite like Zemi17's earlier beat-driven aesthetic and Taylor Kuffner's kinetic installations unavoidably suffer the same curse as every modular synth album: once an artists comes up with a killer patch or loop, it is damn hard to evolve beyond the inherent lattice of repeating patterns, resulting in a lot of motifs that play out for a few minutes, then simply fade away before they wear out their welcome. To his credit, however, Taylor Kuffner navigates that predicament quite well within individual pieces by adding and subtracting countermelodies and seismic bass throbs at well-chosen moments. In fact, there are a handful of pieces that I would not mind hearing stretched to album length. In general, the longest pieces tend to be the most compelling. In "The Ring Is Satu," for example, an insistent metallic pulse blossoms into a simple four note pattern that leaves a resonant, quivering, and eerily beautiful vapor trail in its wake (a feat later enhanced further by the nimble insertion of a chiming melody in the spaces between those sustained tones). Elsewhere, Kuffner revisits that approach on "Contours" with an increased sense of spatial depth and stronger shades of melancholy and subtly dissonant harmonies (as well as a steadily snowballing intensity).
The closing "Serra Tone" is yet another highlight, as it feels like a limping and blearily drugged-sounding variation of the formula, though it ends far too soon for my liking at just over three minutes. That said, it makes an excellent finale for quite a unique and inventively crafted whole. If I had not heard this album, I could imagine myself grimacing at the spectre of cultural appropriation and the mechanization of ancient, spiritual music, but my ears came to a very different conclusion: Taylor Kuffner clearly understands and appreciates gamelan music on a deep level and Gamelatron Bidadari feels like a legitimately inspired and ingenious twist on an old favorite. For one, Gamelatron Bidadari sounds absolutely wonderful, as the various gongs and metallophones invariably have a rich and resonant tone. And, while it does not matter in an album context, the elegance and simple beauty of Taylor Kuffner's melodies is mirrored by the physical appearance of the sculptures, which resemble trees with roots and branches (appropriately, “bidadari” can be loosely translated as "forest nymph”). Of course, building a group of machines that competently play gamelan music together is one thing, but doing it in a way that still feels sacred and in harmony with the natural world is quite another and Taylor Kuffner fucking nailed it. Experienced in an album-sized dose, Gamelatron Bidadari feels like a meditative and immersive spell in an enchanted forest of massive, psychotropic wind chimes, which is definitely not an experience that I can get elsewhere.
Sounds can be found here.
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- Duncan Edwards
- Albums and Singles
Originally a musical radio play, these twelve tracks excavate and spotlight the life and work of original Beat poet Bob Kaufman; and with Kaufman the life and the work are genuinely inseparable. A mentor to Kerouac, and dubbed the Black American Rimbaud, Kaufman endured savage SFPD brutality, electroshock treatment, and incarceration, before his young and obscure death in abject poverty. Kaufman had purposefully stilled his own voice with a vow of silence stretching from the JFK assassination until the end of the Vietnam War, yet here it still resounds with the speed and spirit of surrealist jazz, forever “lost in a dream world, where time is told with a beat.”
The Plastik Beatniks, alias Andreas Ammer, Markus and Micha Acher of The Nowist, and Leo Hopfinger aka LeRoy) formed for that September 2020 radio play, “Thank God For Beatniks.” There is also a bit of Ginsberg and Patti Smith, but it’s the contributions from Angel Bat Dawid and Moor Mother which really breathe life into this project. Angel Bat Dawid has consistently exceeded the high expectations generated by her debut The Oracle, and her vocals and clarinet have a perfect air of improvisation, joy, and pain, especially on “West Coast Sound 1956.” Similarly, Moor Mother drives Kaufman’s "War Memoir" with empathy and passion to match the wild, slithering, Eastern-tinged guitar lines. There’s a note of defiant optimism, too, in the simple act of changing the final word of Kaufman’s “O-JazzO War Memorial: Jazz, Don’t Listen To It At Your Own Risk” from “die" to “live."
What tops it all off is the fact that we get to hear Bob Kaufman himself reciting brilliant pieces such as "Hollywood Beat,'' full of dazzlingly psychedelic imagery. It’s a kick to hear him: as if he’s chewing, trance like, on holy existential gum, spitting out near-Dadist lines exploring freedom and mocking the fashionable: “ugly Plymouths swapping exhaust with red convertible Buicks...teenage werewolves, sunset strippers, plastic beatniks… bisexual traffic lights ...disc jockeys with all night shows and all day habits… Hindu holy men with police records clear back to Alabama…hamburger broiled charcoal served in laminated fortune cookies... death-faced agents living on ten percent of nothing…unlit starlets seeking an unfulfilled galaxy..impatient Cadillacs trading in their owners for more successful models.. lanky calypso singers caught with their fads down”"
“Harwood Alley Song'' has a great loop of Kaufman saying a line—“Jazz never made it back down the river”—from the "$$ Abomunus Craxioms $$" section of his Abomunist Manifesto published in Beatitude magazine (1959, founded by Kaufman and William Margolis.) Bob Kaufman was born in New Orleans, the seventh of thirteen kids from a Caribbean mother and German/Jewish father. He journeyed as a seafaring merchant marine where he met Kerouac, dipped into New York, before relocating to San Francisco with Burroughs and Ginsberg. He created his poems despite being beaten nearly to death by the cops, plucked for electric shock treatment, de-carded by the coast guard and blackballed by the FBI for union activity. And after sparking the Beat scene, he surely felt swamped as it changed and diluted with the tide of too many hipsters. At any rate, he never made it back down the river to the Crescent City.
The aching horns which bleed like tragedy across the fabulous title track as Kaufman recites lines from the seventh of his “Jail Poems” written in Cell 3 of San Francisco City Prison are the kind of glorious adornment his words deserve. Words such as “My soul demands a cave of its own, like the Jain god: Yet I must make it go on, hard like jazz, glowing.” Words like “What of the answers I must find questions for? All these strange streets I must find cities for.” This great album is a much more fitting tribute than the city’s gormless naming of "Bob Kaufman Alley" for the spot where he died, destitute, on a borrowed mattress.
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- Sound In Silence
- Albums and Singles
Sound In Silence proudly announces the addition of Logout to its roster of artists, presenting his new mini album Instrumentals.
Logout is the solo project of a multi-instrumentalist, born in Athens, Greece, who for over a decade has been producing his wonderful music, ranging from acoustic folk and lo-fi to dream pop and electronica, having released four albums on labels such as Inner Ear and Tiny Room Records. He has collaborated with artists such as Nalyssa Green, Christos Lainas, Orestis Petrakis, Kalliopi Mitropoulou and others, while back in the mid 2000s he was a member of the indie/alternative band The Place Within which was active between 2005 and 2010.
Instrumentals, Logout’s fifth release, finds him returning to the classical guitar, the instrument with which he started his musical training as a kid. While his previous four albums have been focused to songwriting, this is his first release without lyrics. It explores musical themes written in the span of more than twenty years, with the resulting seven tracks ending up somewhere between classical & indie folk genres. On all the tracks Logout is supported by the beautiful violins of Kalliopi Mitropoulou, a classical violinist who also performs in multiple classical and indie projects in Athens and London.
Carefully mastered by George Mastrokostas (aka Absent Without Leave), Instrumentals is a brilliant release that will appeal to anyone moved by the music of artists such as Matt Elliott, Manyfingers and Message To Bears.
More information can be found here.
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- Sound In Silence
- Albums and Singles
Sound In Silence proudly announces the addition of Nowherians to its roster of artists, presenting his official debut album That Is Not An Acceptable Lullaby.
Nowherians is an alias created by Crawford Blair, a musician/sound designer who is most well known as a founding member of the band Rothko, a band entirely comprised of three bass players, who coalesced at an unlikely and opportune moment in North London during the late 1990s. With Rothko he released several albums, EPs and singles on labels such as Lo Recordings, Bella Union (the label of Cocteau Twins' Simon Raymonde, with whom they collaborated too) and others, as well as 7” split releases with artists such as Four Tet and Tarentel amongst others, before their original lineup disbanded in 2001. Years later, in 2010, Blair alongside Mark Beazley (also founding member of Rothko) formed Rome Pays Off, at start as a duo project, then later expanded into a trio when Chris Gowers (Karina ESP, Lowered) joined them. Blair has also been a member of several other bands in the late 1990s and 2000s such as Geiger Counter (along with Jon Meade, the third founding member of Rothko, amongst others), Foe and High Above The Storm. Since the early 2010s and under the alias of Nowherians he has released some tracks on various compilations and an unofficial self-released, digital only, compilation of stray tracks in 2012.
Since a move to rural Norfolk in 2018, he has been involved in various musical gatherings and collaborations. These recordings, begun during the spring of 2020, developed from a love of the composer William Byrd and by looking into some of his choral pieces, extracting lines as chords to be used as seeds for further pieces, mostly keyboard sketches. This then led to more thematically similar tunes and with the influence and remote help of fellow musicians Elise Bjarnadóttir (violin, vocals), Olrun Bjarnadóttir (cello, viola), Matthieu Reifler (violin, trumpet, vocals) and Jason Emberton (mastering) throughout the summer months, it was finally finished that December. During that period Blair watched documentaries and read about the eruption of Mount St Helens in 1980, it became an inescapable companion to the making of the album and influenced the sounds, shape and names of some of the pieces.
More information can be found here.
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- Sound In Silence
- Albums and Singles
Sound In Silence proudly announces the addition of JARR to its roster of artists, presenting their new album Talking About X.
JARR is a collaborative project between British ambient guitarists Yellow6 and Wodwo.
Jon Attwood started Yellow6 as a solo guitar project in the late 90s, initially inspired by space/post-rock, electronica and reverb soundscapes. From his debut single on the Enraptured label, Attwood’s discography runs to over 150 releases, spanning a wide spectrum of atmospheric post-rock and minimalist ambient music. Throughout Attwood’s illustrious career, his music has featured on The John Peel Show and Resonance FM, has provided the soundtrack to several films and TV documentaries, and found homes on labels such as Make Mine Music, Resonant, Cathedral Transmissions, Silber and Somewherecold.
Wodwo is the alias of Ray Robinson, an award-winning novelist and screenwriter with literary works that have been adapted into major motion pictures. Inspired by artists such as Yellow6, Yutaka Hirasaka and Marcus Fischer, Robinson’s foray into ambient music began in 2018 and his compositions have quickly attracted a blossoming legion of fans.
Talking About X is JARR’s second full-length album, following their debut An Echo In Her Skin, released on Hush Hush Records in 2021 to critical acclaim. Their new album, made up of nine new tracks with a total duration of about 50 minutes, is stylistically different to their debut, being more heartfelt and emotional. Its sound is far more expansive and melodical, while the soundscapes are still solidly post-rock but with a much dreamier, more ambient feel.
Talking About X is a captivating album with a dreamlike quality, carefully mastered by George Mastrokostas (aka Absent Without Leave) and highly recommended for devotees of Labradford, Roy Montgomery and Harold Budd.
More information can be found here.
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- Sound In Silence
- Albums and Singles
Sound In Silence is proud to welcome back Test Card, presenting his new album Patterns.
Test Card is the solo project of Lee Nicholson, based in Vancouver, Canada. Nicholson was a member of Preston’s Formula One in the late 1990's and Brighton’s Domestic4 in the early 2000's, releasing albums, singles and EP's on various independent labels such as Kooky, Fierce Panda, Liquefaction Empire, Shifty Disco, Invicta Hi-Fi, Vaclav, and Star Harbour.
Patterns is Test Card's fourth full-length album having released his debut album on Symbolic Interaction (2016) followed by two albums on Sound In Silence (2017 and 2020), as well as an EP release on The Slow Music Movement (2018). Patterns consists of ten instrumental tracks with a total duration of 45 minutes blending laid back retro beats, shifting guitar patterns, melodic ambient, subtle piano riffs, and analog synth-scapes. Imagine if you will Hood meeting July Skies at an autumn BBQ hosted by Durutti Column with Labradford flipping the burgers and Epic45 making the mulled wine.
More information can be found here.
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- Sound In Silence
- Albums and Singles
Sound In Silence proudly announces the addition of The Kids And The Cosmos to its roster of artists, presenting his debut Ambient Mixtape Vol.1.
The Kids And The Cosmos is the alias of British producer/composer Justin Lee Radford. He is already known as one half of the ambient/electronic duo HIN, along with Jerome Alexander (Message To Bears), having released their highly acclaimed debut Warmer Weather EP on Sound In Silence in 2019. Radford has cultivated extensive collaborations with film makers, environmentalists, astronauts, scientists and social activists whilst composing music for film, VR, commercials, art installations and theatre. In late 2018 he released a 2-track single of solo piano pieces under his own name and, along with his childhood friends Jerome Alexander (Message To Bears) and Maximilian Fyfe (Paint Splat Faces), he is also member of the project Human Suits composing original scores for the documentaries of Planetary Collective.
Ambient Mixtape Vol.1 is made up of five soothing tracks, with a total duration of about 28 minutes. Ambient Mixtape Vol.1 is a slow and meditative exploration into the life and spirit cycle of a human being. The roots of these tracks grew when Justin held his Nan’s hand as she died, a powerful and transcendent moment he has carried with him ever since.
Utilizing crystalline electric piano chords, delicate electronic textures of calm synth-tones, subtle beats and choral voices, enhanced by the additional mixing and vocals by Jerome Alexander (Message To Bears) and cello performances by James Gow, The Kids And The Cosmos creates a wonderful debut release of warm ambient and dreamy electronica.
More information can be found here.
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- Sound In Silence
- Albums and Singles
Sound In Silence is proud to welcome back Sweeney, presenting his new album Stay For The Sorrow.
For over twenty years Jason Sweeney, based on Kaurna Country in South Australia, has been composing and recording either solo under his own name, in various electronic bands (Other People’s Children, Pretty Boy Crossover) and under the composer alias of Panoptique Electrical.
Stay For The Sorrow, Sweeney’s fourth full-length album under his own name, consists of ten emotional songs, carefully mastered by Antony Ryan of ISAN, with a total duration of about 38 minutes. The album’s instrumentation is centered on Sweeney’s fragile vocals, wistful piano lines, warm synths, acoustic guitars and minimal beats, enhanced by saxophone performances by Melinda Pianoroom, while subtle electronic glitches, vocal samples and field recordings perfectly fill the background atmospherics.
Stay For The Sorrow is a collection of queer, melancholy, ambient pop tunes that traverses the tender territory of companionship lost whilst searching for a brave new heart.
In Sweeney's words:
A heart broke open.
A queer melodrama.
An album was written.
A house was not a home.
But then a landscape appeared.
And in the midst of melancholy there was another love.
He might be replaced with another him but the heart remains true.
More information can be found here.
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- Anthony D'Amico
- Albums and Singles
Originally released on cassette back in 2017 on London's seemingly now defunct ACR label, this absolutely brilliant album failed to reach enough ears to make much of an impact the first time it surfaced. Thankfully, the Slovakian Warm Winters Ltd. label has now reissued this obscure masterpiece (now remastered by Lawrence English) to appropriately universal acclaim. The premise of the album is admittedly a modest one on paper, as Scheible simply presents some excerpts from a cassette scavenged from a second-hand store over a minimal backdrop of ambient/drone music. The crucial detail, however, is that the appropriated recording feels like a strong contender for the greatest thrift store find of the century, intimately documenting the joys and heartaches of a lonely but irrepressibly hopeful middle-aged woman as she waits to be reunited with the love of her life. Beyond that, virtually nothing is known about the album's anonymous heroine or what series of circumstances led to something so personal winding up in a Virginia thrift store. Everyone loves a good mystery, of course, but that aspect of this album feels almost irrelevant once the unknown woman starts talking, as her openness and vulnerability pack one hell of an emotional wallop. Sadly, life was not easy at all for the album's unwitting protagonist, so there are some truly heartbreaking passages to be found, but they are mingled with some others that fill me with an uncharacteristic sense of warmth and connection for the rest of humanity. In short, Fairfax essentially distills all of the joy and pain of life's rich pageant into one perfect record.
The album opens with quite an emotion gut punch, as a simple message of "good morning, my love" immediately turns dark, as the unknown woman immediately realizes that she has confused October and April and announces that she is "not well" (a message furthered darkened by Scheible's minimal backdrop of brooding drones). Things initially seem like they are brightening a bit in the following "After Work on Monday Afternoon," as she talks about how excited she was to receive a letter from her love, but the situation quickly becomes unsettling once more when she mentions that she has read the letter over and over again and gently chastises the letter writer for being "about nine letters behind" (there were some letters that she forgot to number). She then fades away to leave behind a gorgeous coda of swaying, spacey ambiance with frayed, hissing edges. It feels like reality has unexpectedly dissolved into some kind of immersively hallucinatory state of suspended animation. Thankfully, our heroine briefly brightens up for "Our Doubts Are Traitors," as she recites an inspirational poem over some pleasant ambient shimmer. That shimmer gradually becomes curdled and darkened by ugly harmonies and gnarled textures though, which paves the way for next two devastating gut punches: the stand-up bass jazz noir of "Made to Feel Special" and uneasy spectral drift of "Thrilled to Death."
Both pieces are likely to haunt me forever, as will the bittersweetly beautiful "With Any Kind of Luck" that follows, in which the protagonist struggles to keep her composure as she laments how lonely she is and how much she longs for her lover's arms around her. While it features some of the most poignant and lovely music on the album, I am damn glad that the album does not end there, as I would probably be sobbing uncontrollably right now. Fortunately, it does not, as it is followed by an instrumental reprise of "Monday Afternoon" entitled "Together Again" and a crushingly beautiful final piece ("There's Nothing That Says I Cannot Dream") in which the woman sounds genuinely happy and hopeful ("Fairfax today is looking unusually beautiful...it's one of the days like it was when we first met"). That final piece is probably one of the most moving and hauntingly beautiful pieces of music that I have ever heard, which is fitting given that Fairfax is one of the most moving and hauntingly beautiful albums that I have heard as well. This is a stone-cold masterpiece from start to finish.
Samples can be found here.
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