textura

Albums
17 Pygmies
Ælab
Aeroc
Adrian Aniol
Aleph
Artificial Memory Trace
B. Schizophonic / Onodera
Blue Fields
The Boats
Canyons of Static
Celer
drog_A_tek
Fennesz + Sakamoto
Marcus Fischer
Les Fragments de la Nuit
Daniel Thomas Freeman
From the Mouth of the Sun
Goth-Trad
Karol Gwózdz
Mark Harris
Inverz
Kingbastard
Tatsuro Kojima
Robert Lippok
Maps and Diagrams
Merzouga
Message To Bears
mpld
The New Law
Nuojuva
Octave One
Petrels
Puresque
Refractor
Lasse-Marc Riek
Jim Rivers
Dennis Rollins
Scuba
Shigeto
Susurrus
Jason Urick
VVV
Williamette
Windy & Carl
Zomes

Compilations / Mixes
DJ-Kicks: The Exclusives
Future Disco Volume 5
King Deluxe Year One
Phonography Meeting
Pop Ambient 2012

EPs
Blixaboy
Matthew Dear
Fovea Hex
Jacksonville
Kurzwellen 0
Phasen
Pascal Savy

Zomes: Improvisations
Thrill Jockey

Like some dust-covered artefact from a bygone era, Improvisations' three extended meditations play like home-recorded organ-harmonium improvs recorded in some Lower Manhattan loft during the late ‘60s. Close your eyes and you might find images of LaMonte Young and Marian Zazeela forming in your mind, just as you might also expect to hear Pandit Pran Nath's voice enter at any moment to deepen even further the music's raga-drone vibe. That Improvisations was recorded to cassette tape doesn't surprise, given that it sounds as if someone stumbled upon decaying tapes stashed away for decades in some long-forgotten library of archival recordings.

Arriving as it does after Earth Grid, the LP-only Improvisations is the second Zomes release on Thrill Jockey by Lungfish member Asa Osborne. The album's thirty-four minutes of simple keyboard patterns induce a state of peaceful calm in the listener susceptible to the recording's lo-fi charms, and the three pieces (fifteen, ten, and eight minutes in length) cast the listener adrift upon a lulling sea of melodic ripples that blossom relaxedly against insistently droning pedal points. Fuzzy keyboard patterns blissfully advance and recede, swell in volume and then fade, with all of it grandly wheezing in slow-motion expansions and contractions. There's no question that the recording plays like some out-of-time survivor from decades long ago, but that doesn't mean it lacks appeal. If anything, the material's lo-fi quality renders Improvisations all the more endearing, an impression bolstered by its sounding so much like a rarity.

February 2012