Mole Harness: As Language Carves the World
Stray Dog Army

Not only was James Brewster's 20-minute EP, As Language Carves The World Appears, produced quickly, it arrives little more than a month after its three June 2007 pieces were created. The EP's pièce de résistance is obviously its central composition, the fifteen-minute “As I Walk Through Walls But Not Windows.” After opening with a vaporous smear that repeats lullingly, the episodic piece then blossoms with the addition of multi-layered flutterings of acoustic guitar and assorted other textures, many of which suggest the outdoors despite their abstract character (in all likelihood, the sounds are environmental ones Brewster recorded using contact microphones at his newly-adopted Malmö, Sweden home). The middle section, where guitars echo a theme back and forth over a delicate lilting rhythm, is particularly lovely, and the transition into the subsequent meditative section and its gradual intensification is executed with subtlety. The shorter bookends, “As Language Carves The World” and “Hunt For The Counterweight,” are simpler and unprocessed but arresting nonetheless. The first opens with thrumming percussive clatter that's eventually supplanted by a pretty piano part, while the second strips things down to an interlaced weave of acoustic guitar patterns, making for a nicely understated coda. Regard As Language Carves The World Appears as a pleasing stop-gap pointing towards the next Mole Harness full-length scheduled to appear on Apestaartje later this year.

October 2007