Tacoma Park — Glosson Circle Sessions (self released)/ex-corp — assemblage (cached.media)
Carrboro, NC exploratory improv duo Tacoma Park are in some ways a restless pair, always seeking new and interesting ways to make and share their music. On Glosson Circle Sessions, their first proper LP since 2023’s masterful self-titled album, Ben Felton and John Harrison switch up not just how the music is made, but how it’s presented, in a way that emphasizes the act of physical creation. The record itself pulls back from their previous sprawl to highlight focus and reduction; a portrait as much defined by what’s left out as what’s here. And, working with artists Matia Guardabascio (aka Secret Astronomer) and Cortland Gilliam, they’ve surrounded that work with tangible context in the form of objects and visuals.
Tacoma Park found their work frozen in a moment of remote creation due to a technical issue. Here, they instead recorded four jams, each hovering around the half-hour mark, and then sorted through them, paring down and trying to tease out (in Felton’s own words) “moments of beauty and moments of pure garbage, the two often overlapping and complicating each other.” The resulting eight tracks come in just over 35 minutes and do represent Felton’s synths and Harrison’s guitar intersecting in varied and entrancing ways. Whether it’s the burnished, twinkling glow of “GC3” or the pastoral strumming of “GC5,” the friendly churn of “GC2” or the alien radiance of “GC6” (one of the only things missed from past releases is their knack for vividly descriptive track titles), this work can stand beside anything else Tacoma Park have done.
Glosson Circle Sessions is named for the street Harrison lives on, where his house is a community and creative hub, and the location he and Felton started collaborating in person again. Fittingly enough, they’ve extended the world of that album by bringing in Guardabascio and Gilliam, who’ve crafted a text and collage zine and a full-length video to go with the album. You can hear and obtain the digital version of the music at Bandcamp, but to get the video accompaniment you need to get either the zine or the cassette release (or both). The combined effect brings the listener more into the world of the music and the world that produced the music, in addition to just being lovely in its own right.
assemblage by ex-corp Compact Disc released July 2025 Digital Files below
Felton is also part of the slightly mysterious ex-corp, whose debut album assemblage highlights a completely different method of group improvisation. Here, he started a game of musical exquisite corpse by sending two pieces out to another member, who recorded their reaction to it. Felton then sent those pieces to the next musician, and so on until he had everyone’s own take on only the previous player’s work. Unlike some versions of the game, however, the results were not strung together sequentially so much as they were superimposed onto one another, resulting in two pieces (18 and 17 minutes respectively).
You might think that last step would result in something jumbled, unpleasantly dissonant, or cacophonous. But from the first warm, organ-like tones of “EC I” to the closing fadeout of drums, piano, and drone that ends “EC II,” the outcome is much more unified, a warm hum of polyphony where each participant adds a distinct yet consonant voice. It would be fascinating to listen to assemblage with some way of knowing the order of the layers, but as a whole it’s a satisfying collaboration that sounds like it could easily have been the work of everyone playing together in a room. The context of its creation is fascinating, but as always, the true value of the work rests more in how it sounds and feels.
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For cachedmedia, a Colorado-based record label, book publisher, and…
