Anduin: Richmond Tape Club Volume Four
Richmond Tape Club

The fourth volume in Richmond Tape Club's series of twenty-minute EPs from Richmond, Virginia-based electronic artists (available digitally and in a cassette run of 100 copies), Jonathan Lee's Anduin set is not necessarily the project's most distinctive one to date (as those preceding it by Negative Gemini, Elian, and Slow News Day in the Vampire World have certainly been that) as the one that feels most like a fully rounded mini-album statement.

Developed from material originally heard in installation performances titled Sketches of the Lesser Death, the cassette's five tracks represent the first new Anduin material since 2012's Stolen Years LP. But though individual tracks are identified, the cassette presents them more in the form of side-long suites with the pieces bleeding into one another. The overall tone of Stolen Years reasserts itself in material that resembles a churning undertow of dark industrial-ambient and acoustic jazz. Jimmy Ghaphery contributes bluesy saxophone riffing to Lee's quietly disturbing soundscapes, which also feature harmonica wail and electric guitar haze from from Noah Saval and Graham Scala, respectively. Little sunlight peeks through these atmospheric settings, whose diseased rhythm pulses and field recordings of traffic noise and nocturnal insects more evoke rainy, night-time city settings than sunny countryside excursions.

November 2013