Discover Top Posts Tagged with #andras fox

András - “Vinyl Only”

Sanity [Punp, 2017]

#Andras #Andras Fox #Punp Records #house #dance

Andras Fox feat. Oscar S. Thorn - “What They Say”

Embassy Café [Dopeness Galore, 2013]

#Andras Fox #Oscar S. Thorn #Embassy Cafe #Dopeness Galore #house #funk

Reviews 290: Wilson Tanner

Back in 2016, Andrew Wilson and John Tanner joined together for 69 on Growing Bin, which for me is a something of a masterpiece. Across the album, the duo married bucolic guitars, meditative woodwinds, and sunset electronics to gorgeous effect, resulting in a sonic experience of deep serenity and new age mastery. So when Efficient Space released the newest Wilson Tanner experience II, it was a sincere surprise discovering how abstract, strange, and challenging everything was this time around. Mostly gone are the lush and organic textures of that last album, with the focus now on modular electronics and experimental ecosystems of aquatic looping, alien minimalism, and vaporous prog ambiance. Everything here swims through layers of shadowy delirium and the entire experience is informed by the album’s unconventional recording process, which saw Wilson and Tanner loading a 1950’s riverboat called “These Days” with an array of weather proof electronics. Leaving behind terrestrial foundations and resting above the mysterious underwater universe, the duo perhaps lost sight of who or where they were, lapsing into some forgotten ancestral remembrance of a time lost at sea…of the primal experience of surrendering to the totalities of the ocean world. And to combat the onset madness and intense feelings of isolation, Wilson and Tanner turned to these mystifying electroacoustic sea shanties...these strange expanses of subaquatic drone that sound as if they were constructed by beings who’ve only ever known only the motions of the waves, the smell of a salt breeze, the sun’s blaze, and a sparkling canopy of stars.

Wilson Tanner - II (Efficient Space, 2019) We open on “My Gull” and it’s pianos washing back and forth amidst oceanic clouds of ambiance, with subtle psychosonic fx kissing the mix. The keys lock into a simple chord refrain, though the patterns are sparsely embellished with dancing melodic filigree. Seagulls circle overhead, filtering synths glow in the background, and sometimes the piano melodies recede, leaving behind vacuous stretches of swelling ambiance. And towards the end, after one of these immerse stretches of synthesis cuts away, we are left with nothing but the calming sounds of a life by the sea, with boats bumping gently against wooden docks beneath grey clouds and patchwork sunlight. There are further synthetic piano meditations in “Loch & Key,” as a simplistic riff bounces on echowaves. Airy synthesizers trace colorful curlicues over the flowing piano spells and deep in the background, cloudform melodies are smothered yet beautiful, evoking ghost choirs and mermaid reveries. The mix is awash in seaside field recordings, all soft clatters and watery drips, and there are these guttural sounds that flow in at times, which are indistinguishable as electronic or organic. My best guess is that John Tanner’s clarinet is flowing through some modular chain, but whatever the source, the evocation is of some strange sea creature croaking towards the sky. By the end of the track, muted melodies dance in counterpoint to the pianos, creating a pop-tinged passage of minimalist magic, one that is eventually overlaid by strange sliding melodies and soft currents of feedback that progressively evolve into robotic fusion weirdness, resulting in a strange moment of sci-fi solo flamboyance at odds with the otherwise bucolic ambiance.

Mellotron flutes add touches of Aegean melancholy to “Perishable” while an acoustic guitar wanders through funereal desert atmospheres…like a spaghetti western deconstructed into wandering dreamfolk. Vibrato electronics arc overhead and haunted melodies are shrouded in spectral haze until we arrive at an ambient prog interlude, wherein sampled woodwinds sing mournfully over strange pulsations, resulting in a gaseous dance through layers of springtide sadness. The guitar returns, still shambolic and worn out, but now leaning towards Flamenco exoticisms while the flute continually ascends, at some point working itself into a radiant church hymn. The centerpiece of II is the epic “Killcord pts I-III,” which is centered on this mind-melting sequence…like a cyborg tuba caught in maniacal loop while constantly transforming into a mutant gurgle. Synths scream across the void and pull the soul into darkness before giving way to strange percussive bubble formations, with atonal musique concrète sonics working against the sequential hypnotics. The mix is alight with movement and sees liquids oscillating and muted trumpets blaring while crystalline idiophones play triumphant themes beneath layers of electronic dust. Imagine some strange approximation of Berlin school music submerged within an aquatic dreamworld, with hyperspeed pulsations causing time itself to skip and synthesizers weaving themes of alien majesty. The ecstatic energy surrounding Wilson and Tanner is palpable and it’s easy to imagine the pair locked into some sort shamanic ritual playing out on primitive electronics, with spells cast in the form of mutant marimba lines, acidic slides, mechanical loops, and sub-bass rumbles.

The B-side opens with “Idle” and its bells smearing into metallic distortion. Cyborg chirps flutter and gong-like swells of bass ambiance hover like stormclouds until abstracted rave electronics start firing through the mix, with big bubbles of acid and subsonic synth motions locking into drunken repetitions. Black hole vapors flow all around and horror film feedback floats across the spectrum while sizzling snare hits transform into radiophonic weirdness. Squelching synths establish a sort of daydream groove alongside futuristic tom tom experimentations and ethereal melodies swim over heard…sometimes evoking a beautiful prog elegy while at other times devolving into sheets of dissonance. And as the track progresses, oscillations flutter on a sea breeze, mechanized chirps are joined by birdsong, and the massive clouds of bass ambiance recede momentarily, only to fade back in like some viscous body of shadow. Next is “All Hands Bury the Dead,” which features lullaby melodies and new age sonics mutating through an LSD haze, with notes curling in on themselves and spontaneously vaporizing. Water laps gently beneath the ambient waveforms and as we drift along in a state of meditative clam, it all begins evoking for me the music of Hiroshi Yoshimura and Satoshi Ashikawa…like a visage from a window of an unremarkable yet still beautiful afternoon where clouds drift lazily overhead and blue waves crash to shore. Eventually, choppy tremolo electronics move into the stereo field and disturb this pictaresque serenity and once the environmental keyboard melodies finally drift away, blurry synthesizers merge with the sounds of flowing water.

A mutant funk bassline anchors “Safe. Bird.”…as if a clavinet is jamming through an ambient seascape. Percolating woodwinds and bleeping satellites execute some enigmatic Morse code conversation and soft focus melodies are surrounded by ring modulating psychedelia, all while the bassline continues its sludgy groove. It’s like some mid 70’s Miles fusion experiment a or Magma zeuhl ceremonial, only reduced to just stoner bass riffing and space age oceans of shimmering detritus. And by the end of the track, the basslines are replaced by alien chirps, extra-terrestrial gurgles, and vibraphones dazzling the mind with cinematic leads and downer descents. The album closes on “Crossing the Bar” and its wavering oscillations breaking apart over the motions of water. Resonant vocalisms swell on one side of the mix while bleary-eyed layers swirl on the other…as if two different stretches of ambient music have been overlaid then panned hard. Clicking percussive textures crackle in the air and bass synths pitch-shift continuously, evoking the engine sounds of the riverboat “These Days” as it makes its way across the deep dark waters. Synthesizers blend seamlessly with aquatic field records and the mind loses all sense of where the natural end and the electronic begins, with the track mostly just letting throbbing machines hum beneath bodies of atonal new age mesmerism. At some point, a slow motion synth solo erupts over the mix…calling out to the stars, desperate and pleading…as the rest of the stereo field mutates into a fractal soundbath. And by the end, we are left with looping chimes, feedback sirens, flying birds, haunted drones, and the increasingly distant sounds of Wilson’s and Tanner’s boat as it sales further and further towards some unknowable horizon.

(images from my personal copy)