#aperus

[redshift-13]

[thenewobjective]

ACL 2021 ~ Top Ten Drone

ACL 2021 ~ Top Ten Drone

Drone is the music of suspension: a constant underpinning of sound graced by modulation.  The music was perfect for a year in which things seemed to move very slowly, as if through molasses.  Many of the artists on this year’s list were inspired by isolation or political impasses.  Others found patterns in the weather or created their own loops. While we reviewed less drone this year than in…

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[thenewobjective]

Aperus ~ Weather Anomalies

Aperus ~ Weather Anomalies

Last year at this time, we reviewed Aperus‘ Archaic Signal, an album informed by petroglyphs and the lost civilizations of New Mexico.  Weather Anomalies is a worthy follow-up, offered with similarly generous packaging; a car’s rusted hood graces the cover, while the packet includes a series of weather photographs. When gazing upon these cloud formations, one might expect an album airy, light and…

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[dustedmagazine]

Aperus — Archaic Signal (Geophonic Records)

Archaic Signal by Aperus

Brian McWilliams, who records as Aperus, filters natural and technological sound through a surf of static, creating large-scale, echoing soundscapes that hear the world as if from a vast distance. The artist, who lives in the desert in New Mexico, has lately been sampling the sounds gathered by a high powered antenna at a university in the Netherlands (the sounds are available via an online interface). Shards of foreign conversation, choral singing and other elements flutter through his ambient atmospheres, not quite heard but evocative. Listening feels like hovering in space, half-tuned to the world’s transmissions and aching for life and connection.

“New Antenna,” for instance, emits a dopplering electronic hum which seems to move toward us and away in slow pulses. Against this backdrop, distorted voices float in and out of our peripheral hearing. A man with a Russian accent repeatedly declares, “Now I have a new antenna.” The cut is full of mysterious, hissing, vibrating tones, which seems to imply large, empty spaces, desolation and the futility of long-distance communication. The title track is lighter, airier and filled with a hovering anticipation; it sounds the inner workings of a submarine, but also like prayer and revelation. Towards the end, something that sounds like a massed choral hymn bobs up out of the stew of sounds then recedes, bracketed by the beep sequence for a non-working phone number.

These two are likely derived from McWilliams’ antenna project, but he also mines and distorts and obscures natural sounds from his desert environment for a similar effect. The long “Birdsong as a Mantra” lays an ominous buzz under the sounds of birdcalls. Electronic hums zoom in and out of focus, leaving jet trails of dissonance, as the birds chirp in a repeated loop over and over again. The electronic sounds keep us at a distance from the natural ones, erecting a scrim of temporal or physical remove. We don’t so much feel surrounded by nature as exiled from it; there is a sense of longing in the cut.

Later tracks are more luminous and musical, letting pristine electronic tones linger over the hiss and seethe of static. “Silver Birds,” “Archeodreaming” and “Afterglow” all approach overt melody, but back away, dissolving big church-organ-ish tones into a vibrating mesh of sensation.  These are enveloping, encircling washes of sound, which never cohere into songs per se, but provide engrossing places to stay and absorb sensation for a little while.

Jennifer Kelly

[thenewobjective]

Aperus ~ Archaic Signal

Aperus ~ Archaic Signal

We’re always appreciative when artists go the extra mile, and Brian McWilliams (Aperus) has done so literally and figuratively.  The artist has translated visits to New Mexico’s La Cienaguilla Petroglyph site into music, photography and art, and Archaic Signal is a thoughtful physical edition of his multi-media work. The combination of petroglyphs, art cards and dark ambience forms a tactile…

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