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[ Album Review |
1) Stationary Travels + 2) Exclaim! + 3) Fluid Radio ]
1) Still being somewhat nascent in the world of ambient and experimental music, I had not yet encountered the beguiling alchemy from the trio of Joseph Yonker and brothers Davin & Kevin Chong known as Willamette before previewing their third full length album entitled Diminished Composition. I have since corrected that deficiency by sampling the sublime pleasures of Echo Park (Infraction, 2011) and Always in Postscript (Own Records, 2012) while awaiting this gem of a release which is now available on Scissor Tail Records.
Listening to Willamette is like floating on a quiescent sea fed by a confluence of warm ambient drones, ephemeral textures, and soothing timbres woven from piano, strings, and voice. It is impeccable in its construction, uncompromising in its patient commitment to stillness, and awash in tender emotion and an overwhelming sense of nostalgia. The best way to experience Diminished Composition is in its wholeness from start to finish, but I found “At Length and Dead Horse”, “Four Films (Films Four)”, “End of Good Discipline”, and the title track particular affecting while “Codeine Catnap” remained unfailing in its power to mesmerize. This is melancholy and minimalism in perfect balance, exquisitely rendered.
Scissor Tail is offering Diminished Composition in a limited run of 200 pressings on virgin vinyl as well as a variety of high quality digital formats via their Bandcamp.
2) Diminished Composition is Willamette's first full-length in almost five years. This degree of deliberation has yielded nine stunning ambient tracks that, taken together, suggest a soundtrack in search of a film. And yet there is a semblance of a narrative, a sense of the cinematic, as the faintly rendered samples evoke longing and heartbreak. These compositions are deceptively simple, with sound textures playing such a key role that the sublime details are easy to overlook. A good of set headphones will help nurture these songs, coax out their subtleties, and allow them to reach full bloom.
Brushstrokes of drone are applied with deftness to a sonically eroded canvas. The looped breaths on "At Last And Dead Horse" are nearly imperceptible, while "End of Good Discipline" pairs wistful strings and piano with the rattle of a film projector. Many songs, like "Four Films (Films Four)" paint serene soundscapes in layers of warm tones.
Understated and unadorned, Diminished Composition erodes beautifully, then invites listeners to survey the ruins.
3) The opening drone of Diminished Composition is onyx in its colour, a black, sweeping movement nesting among the hanging stars. The unseeing cosmos breathes out and gives birth to the music, something that’s aeons old and yet forever young. Pillars of dust gently touch the cloudy surface of the echoing, swelling drone. In reality, ‘Inland Empire’ plays out its life in the cold, but time heals, and as the seconds pass the record gradually lightens. This cool, moody opening is paving the way for brighter things still to come, and the drones use the darker cavern and its notoriously rocky incline as a stepping stone to ultimately enter the light. They’re on their way to a better place. The slightly melancholic drones coil around each other, slowly progressing with a fluid, water-like motion that belies the tired and aching weight of the drone. Fatigued they may be, but they never give up; they never stop searching for the light and the promise of hope that it brings. If you view the album as a whole, ‘Inland Empire’ seems like it’s separated, dislocated and living alone, as if in exile.
Willamette is the project of Joseph Yonker, Davin Chong and Kevin Chong, and their ambient music is as lovely as Paris in February. There’s a special kind of clarity to the tone despite its dull, bass-heavy angle of attack…
A clear mind and an open heart perfumes the drone, and otherworldly moments of untainted, everlasting tranquillity wash up on the aural shores.
Out on Scissor Tail, Diminished Composition is awash with beautifully subtle colours and softly pushed contrasts, ambient music emanating and imitating life itself; lighter spells of sunshine are occasionally and unavoidably eclipsed by darker shades. Echoing, closed horns continuously glow, but it’s a weak, unstable light. The light is tightly cinched and muted, only a glimmer, and that’s what intentionally deprives the music of a brighter sound. All in all, the record has a healthy, rosy colour to its cheeks. A harmonious aura surrounds its angelic sound, and it surrounds it completely, like a halo.
A tender, almost sensual harmony enters, driving slowly. At this point, the soul of the music is postclassical, but the deep, layered textures never dissolve, depriving the music of placing two feet in the strictly classical genre. Its sighing sound has been around for a long time. A softly played piano enters, but the treated drones soon return, encompassing the music. Its circular loop only heightens the sense of serenity; you’ll find yourself relaxing as the tones wash over you. As the record disappears, you start to feel a little alone. That’s what Diminished Composition does to you; it enters your being and shares its heart with you, its dark romance weaving in and around your life.
Aaron Martin – Touch Dissolves.
2018 ; IIKKI.
[ Touch Dissolves is the result of a dialog between the photographer Yusuf Sevinçli and the composer/musician Aaron Martin initiated by IIKKI between January 2018 and May 2018. ]
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[ Album Review | Fluid Radio ]
Touch Dissolves is a free-flowing dialogue, bonding cellist Aaron Martin and photographer Yusuf Sevinçli. IKKII blends photography and music, and Touch Dissolves does the same thing, consisting of two physical imprints (photographic book and vinyl) and limited to 500 copies each. The album’s also available on vinyl, cd, and as a download, but to get the most out of the experience, it’s recommended that the book should be digested alone, the music listened to alone, and then both viewed and listened to together.
Photography often accompanies and compliments music, but the iconic image of the album cover, which in the sixties and seventies was a statement of intent, and gave clues to the music inside even before you’d set the needle down, has been in decline, losing some of its importance over the last twenty or so years. The two are on equal footing here, though. One is just as relevant, and just as valuable, as the other. This record takes the music back to that golden age, where the image was equal to the music inside the sleeve. The music sings to the ethereal and everlasting snapshot, that image caught in the grip of time, and the image directs the optic nerve of the melody, not only supporting it, but influencing it.
Like music, photography is subjective and open to interpretation, but the visual element puts something direct and concrete in front of the viewer. Music’s invisible, her lines and waves similar to reading a novel in that the mind has to use some imagination to help shape a world. The photograph clicks off a specific picture, but it still wants the listener to fil in the blanks. A book can’t read itself.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one’s around to hear it (or tweet about it), does it make a sound?
Yusuf Sevinçli’s photography wanders by the roadside, gazing at the passing people and zooming in on the forgotten aspects of life, slinking into crucial gaps that are often missed but are essential in framing the moment. These photographs stray. The stability of home base has gone. Instead, they have an eye for exploration, adventuring, and this fits in with the body language of Martin’s cello, which is as bright and animated as a splayed finger of sunlight. The cello enjoys the chance to roam around in the great outdoors, accompanying the image.
Like two friends on a weekend camping trip, a strong chain exists between the detailed texture of a photograph and the timbre of the music – in this instance, a cello rising from the loam, helping to colour in and fill the empty areas that live just out of shot and outside its developed square, surrounding the picture with a bright flash of music, and filling in the vacant geography that lies just out of sight of Sevinçli’s camera. His photographs are bathed in black-and-white moonlight, a sharp and striking collection of individual moments wrapped up in the coils of music, their vital shapes and textures leaping out of the page. The sheet music takes monochromatic snapshots of its own as its black notes slink around the climbing frame of a black stave. The notes tell a continuing story with their snaking turns and rhythmic gauntlets, and so do the photographs inside the book. They are one and the same.
