R.E. Smith: On Little Farm
Amaryllis Recordings
That On Little Farm resonates strongly doesn't surprise: it is, after all, the the creative spawn of Rachel Smith, who, among other things, partners with Mitch Greer in the wonderful experimental outfit The Lickets. She brings an extensive skill set to the solo release: an audio-visual artist and multi-instrumentalist, Smith creates material extending from psych-folk to ambient-electronic soundscapes, and by her own admission draws inspiration from “film, especially B-movies, science fiction, 8-bit games, the sound of the future, the weird, and the absurd.” On Little Farm, her first solo work, is but one of many new releases Greer's issued since inaugurating his Amaryllis Recordings imprint just months ago.
The recording lives up to its billing as an “electronic deep listening album for late night,” one whereby eerie rumblings punctuate the stillness of a sleepy village and frazzle the nerves of its townsfolk (any overlap between Smith's release, which was begun in 2015, and the recent film The Vast of Night is purely coincidental, however close the connection might seem). While a sci-fi narrative of sorts can be gleaned from the track titles, the material is evocative on purely audio terms, shaped as it was by Smith using electronics, processed sounds, and flute.
Her sensitivity to timbre is obvious the moment “Clocktower” introduces the forty-one-minute set. In this painterly overture, waves of shimmering electronics roll in, accompanied by clusters of alien transmissions and creature babble; “Plateau” follows without pause, a metronomic pulse now suggesting contact being made by the visitors with greater deliberation and distorted warblings hinting at communications of a different kind.
If any album could be a kindred spirit to On Little Farm, it's Kraftwerk's Radioactivity. When synth textures elegantly glide across minimal electronic pulses during “Waiting Room” and “Five Nine Three,” it's easy to draw a parallel between Smith's music and that of the Düsseldorf quartet, and her release, like Kraftwerk's, intersperses experimental electronic vignettes (e.g., “Countdown”) in amongst more fully developed pieces. Regardless, Smith is discerning throughout in her approach. Care is always taken in the nature of the sounds crafted for an arrangement, and she's equally circumspect about achieving a sense of balance in her material. Of the abundance of releases Greer has issued to date on Amaryllis Recordings, On Little Farm definitely merits attention.July 2020