Adam Pacione: Dobranoc
Elevator Bath

Dale Lloyd: Akasha_for Record
Elevator Bath

Even before hearing them, these latest releases from Elevator Bath make a powerful impression, arriving as they do in a picture disc format and thick, twelve-inch vinyl slabs. Issued in an edition of 216, the Dale Lloyd album displays two lightly-manipulated photographic images by the artist, while Adam Pacione's release, available in 268 copies, features two macro-photographic images taken around 1995. Watching the colours swirl into abstract patterns as the artists' material fills the room makes for a powerful and transporting experience.

Adam Pacione's name has frequented textura's pages a number of times, so any new material from the Fort Worth, Texas producer is always welcome. His finely-calibrated ambient soundscaping has graced Elevator Bath, Infraction, and his own Bee Eater Recordings imprint during the last five years. In the present case, Pacione generated Dobranoc's forty-four minutes of material from field recordings, guitars, shortwave radio, analog keyboards, and Moog filters. Though the release is identified as having five separate pieces, each vinyl side flows together so that Dobranoc feels like it's actually made up of two long-form settings. Cloud formations appear to roll slowly across the open tundra during the opener “Selo,” after which blurry tonal fields, smothered in vaorous hiss, shimmer and swell during the slow climb of “Always.” “When The Thunder Breaks, It Breaks For You And Me” juxtaposes a softly ringing industrial texture and the gentle flow of a droning chord, before a reprise of “Always” re-introduces its enveloping tonal mass and the title piece's flowing tendrils guide the listener home on a magic carpet of tranquil calm.

Seattle, Washington-based Lloyd, who has recorded for numerous labels including and/OAR, Alluvial Recordings, Mystery Sea, and Room40, brings his first new release in three years to the Elevator Bath imprint. A single composition split into two parts, the thirty-nine-minute Akasha_for Record unfolds via softly glimmering organ tones and percussive micro-detail, and then blossoms into drifting masses of twilight tones and speckled noise textures. The first part shimmers serenely until its close, in contrast to the bass-heavy whorls of noise-laden thrum which introduce part two. That opening episode comes to an abrupt close that clears the slate for a reverberant exercise in hollowed-out, crystalline shudder. Interestingly, Akasha_for Record is more episodic than Dobranoc, despite the fact that Lloyd's release is a single, two-part piece whereas Pacione's more uniform material is, on paper, indexed as five separate pieces. It's also worth noting that Lloyd's embrace of the vinyl format even extends to the inevitable erosion that develops over time; rather than seeing that as a negative element, he instead sees the gradual accumulation of dust, pops, and crackles as textural details that contribute positively to the work's content, with each vinyl slab gradually developing into a unique variation on the shared theme.

October 2009