textura

Albums
Actress
Ellen Allien
The Alps
Aniline
Anodyne
Tommy Babin's Benzene
Maya Beiser
Pier Bucci
Budd & Wright
Celer
Ceremony
Richard Chartier
Deceptikon
Deepchord & Echospace
Marcel Dettmann
Dirac
Efdemin
GéNIA
Guillaume & C. Dumonts
Hammock
Helvacioglu & Boysen
Richard A Ingram
Inhabitants
Marsen Jules
Akira Kosemura
Manual
Dom Mino'
Teruyuki Nobuchika
Nono/ Wakabayashi
Olan Mill
Originalljudet
Fabio Orsi
M.Ostermeier
Rene Hell
Jeffrey Roden
J. Rogers
Roll The Dice
Secret Cities
Soundpool

Compilations / Mixes
Main Control Board
SEED X: Part I - III

EPs
Alternative Networks Vol. 2
Aural Diptych Series # 1
Aural Diptych Series # 2
Celer
Deerhoof vs OneOne
Filterwolf
Incite/
Ketem
Kogumaza
Yann Novak
Poratz
Quiroga
Repeat Orchestra
Sepalcure
Sub Loam
v4w.enko
The Zeitgeist EP

DVD
Stephen Vitiello

Sub Loam: 2
Dissolving Records

If there's not a whole lot of imagination going on here title-wise, there's more than enough happening visually to make up for it. Issued in a hand-numbered, 110-copy run, 2, two-track EP by Thomas Shrubsole (aka Sub Loam) on his own Dissolving label, arrives in a paper bag containing the CD, four tinted photographs, and track details. A seeming evocation of a primeval forest before dawn breaks, the fifteen-minute opening piece burbles and floats through an aquatic web of hiss, echo, and reverb—so thick one could drown in it—filled with warbling percussive streams and the sleepy meander of an ever-so-faint central melody. It's eventually joined by another, at which point they start to resemble the dazed moans of humans lost in the jungle. While generally similar in character to the first, the second setting, “Grass And Soil, Rutted Track, A Mound Of Earth,” includes sounds of what could pass for primal earth activity—burbling and sucking noises that suggest molten lava—and ups the convulsive ante until the track teeters woozily like some drunken rhino. It wouldn't be inaccurate to say it's unlike anything else I've heard in recent memory.

June 2010