Review: Smyth - Senescence (Sunshine Ltd, 2011)
Floridian label Sunshine Ltd. specialize in all-natural, smeared ambient music which appears to be directly influenced by the philosophy of Brian Eno regarding music making and life itself. Smyth, the one-man project of sound explorist Jared Smyth, is no exception, with his Senescence offering a stripped-down, simple, almost minimalistic approach known from Eno's Music for Airports.
The tracks on the cassette, which contains beautiful artwork related to nature and cyclic changes (seasons, life and death etc.), are not as much conscious, melodic construction but rather appear to be a result of generative processes applied to the sounds. Spacious, high-pitched drones are only rarely accented by the swells of synthesizer bass, resulting in seemingly completely random, but in a disciplined, "bound-by-the-rules" way. Another standout element of the cassette are the field recordings, which are reverbed and modified to create a delicate, crumbling, glitchy tapestry which enhances the natural feel of the album. Distant sounds of leaves rumbling blend seamlessly with sparse, minimalistic melodies.
Another standout quality of Smyth's cassette is the amount of work put into the sound. The meticulous work put into creating the album's oneiric soundscapes calls for the listener's attention right after putting tape into the deck. In a scene where everybody and their mother make drone/ambient now, with many "musicians" (as my friend noted some time ago), releasing pretty much anything they can fart out on a c-10 limited to 15 copies on some ultra-underground label, labels like Sunshine Ltd and artists like Jared Smyth (and David Andree, whose cassette I've reviewed quite some time ago) bring a ray of light. Highly recommended for all fans of all-natural, dreamy ambient.
