Articles
2010 Top 10s and 20s
Will Long (Celer)

Albums
Bilxaboy
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma
Celer & Yui Onodera
Cepia
Dead Leaf Echo
Ferraris & Uggeri
Ernesto Ferreyra
Flying Horseman
The Foreign Exchange
Les Fragments de la Nuit
Ghost and Tape
Andrew Hargreaves
Head Of Wantastiquet
i8u
Anders Ilar
Quintana Jacobsma
Kaiserdisco
Leafcutter John
Clem Leek
The Lickets
The Machine
Magda
My Fun
Ostendorf, Zoubek, Lauzier
Part Timer
Phillips + Hara
RV Paintings
Set In Sand
Shackleton
Shigeto
Matt Shoemaker
Sun City Girls
Supersilent
Swartz
Ben Swire
Collin Thomas
Tomo
Upward Arrows

Compilations / Mixes
Exp. Dance Breaks 36
Fünf
Lee Jones
The Moon Comes Closer
Note of Seconds
Tensnake

EPs
8Bitch
Celer
Jasper TX
Jozif
Lerosa
Machinefabriek
Patscan
Pleq
Simon Scott
SHEMALE
Thorsten Soltau / Weiss
Jace Syntax & BlackJack
Weiss

Swartz: Nighttide
Utter East

It would be, I think, safe to say that Steve Swartz's Nighttide is an experimental ambient-drone recording like no other. That's because Swartz, a Detroit, Michigan-based member of both Au Revoir Borealis and For Wishes, purposefully designed the album's material, in its initial form at least, to help ease his young daughter off to sleep and actually went so far as to set up a guitar and amp in her room so that his meditative guitar textures could help induce slumber. But lest anyone get the wrong idea, let it be clear that Swartz's first solo instrumental outing isn't an exercise in subliminal micro-sound but a rich and expansive excursion into guitar-generated sound sculpting; it's far from one-dimensional too, as Swartz coaxes a broad range of sounds from his six-string and expands upon that foundation by manipulating the guitar using oscillating fans, mallets, curtains blowing in the wind, and so forth.

At times soft tinkles, phase-shifted pings, and myriad other accents filter through the dense scrim Swartz builds up from layers of electric and acoustic guitars. It's easy to imagine him playing “Late Machines” in his daughter's bedroom, so lulling is the track's peaceful blend of acoustic guitars, bass tones, ambient washes, and percussive smudges; the closing piece, “The Blue Light of Morning” captures those precious moments of pre-dawn calm before the stress of the workday arrives in full frenetic measure. And on “Curtains” a bedside fan murmurs so softly it resembles a softly snoring adult, an effect in keeping with the gauzy track itself, which drifts so placidly it feels as if time has been suspended altogether. Slightly more animated is “Night Ships,” where a cymbal accent adds a rare rhythmic propulsion to the album.

Nighttide is best appreciated via headphones for the simple reason that Swartz decided early on to record, mix, and master the album in high-resolution audio so as to preserve the music's subtleties and dynamics. As a result, the album's pieces play like immense sound clouds speckled with sharply defined details that one can easily zoom in on, even when the elements flow into one another like liquids. That the first track is titled “Warm Current” is in itself telling, as Nighttide's material often undulates in a manner that proves both enveloping and calming. Furthermore, the fact that it eschews abrasiveness merely makes the collection all the more endearing. In short, it's a beguiling listen from start to finish, and well worth the sixty-eight-minute investment of one's time.

December 2010