This excellent international anthology of various artists utilizes extensive field recordings of rural atmospheres, as well as instrumental manipulations to create sixteen highly evocative soundscapes. From well known, to lesser known entities: Tom Carter & Vanessa Arn, Francisco Lopez, Radian, The Moglass, Rosy Parlane, Kim Cascone, and many others. Rain drizzles and drips, a distant airplane passes, wind and water gurgles, murmurs and roars, insects sing, automobiles pass, generators hum inside of a wintery storm, random strings are plucked in an icy grotto while alien frequencies bleed through the walls. A submarine filled with ghosts floats weightlessly through a cluster of electric eels, as codified languages of stone intone and undulate.
Review
the Moglass/Tom Carter & Vanessa Arn – Snake-Tongued / Swallow-Tailed
First off Tom and Vanessa use chimes, bells, guitar, and more to create a stark spacious landscape called appropriately enough Mojave, that last for almost eleven minutes. Next clocking in at 22:43 is the rather monumental Atmananda; slowly a gradual accumulation of swirling shimmering silver light. Like moths to a flame, this light draws the ghosts, who shyly try to hide in the shadows. Ukrainian band the Moglass deliver three droning spectral and spacious ambient distances. The first feels like a series of atmospheric conditions; like microclimates that unfold in sequence in your earphones. The second is thirteen and a half minutes of collaged layers of vocals interweaving with a throbbing android heartbeat that evolves into an active interactive meandering moonlight stroll. The final track ends things with a group of people speaking Russian that shatters and refracts into a drone like sunlight untill all that’s left are big hazy shapes of light too bright to see. A theme like Durutti Column at 78 RPM recurs until we gently sail off the edge of the Earth.
The Moglass – Telegraph poles are getting smaller and smaller as the distance grows
This Ukrainian trio manifest a spacey series ofsounds over the course of the half dozen tracks presented here. Guitar,bass and electronics combine to create these hazy soft industrialexcursions. Like a small organic factory, pulsing and spitting out thesefragile mutable sonic textures as it spins lazily in space. The thirdtrack has a fragile folkish aspect that gets phased and shifted though arevolving multifaceted cut crystal, while a frog croaks, other subtlenatural sounds caress the periphery of this mechanical core, and anarrhythmic guitar navigates a narrow trail on a high sheer rockface.Rather than play in unison, the instruments here seem to overlap insubtle moire patterns as the pieces unravel. Navigating the twistedterrain of a discarded foil gum wrapper in microscopic vehicles, andobserving all of the delicate details. They also claim Paul Bowles booksas an influence; and there is a similar detachment in their work; as ifit was all watched as it unfolded from a chilly distance.
George Parsons