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[ Album Review |
1) Headphone Commute + 2) Resident Advisor +
3) Ambient Exotica + 4) Textura ]
1) Featuring cover art of pinhole photography taken by Marcus Fischer himself, Monocoastal is a document of found objects, a travelogue of a weary nomad across the West Coast of America, a lo-fi collection of field recordings and textures, as if heard through the camera’s pinhole itself. Crumbling noises, background tape hiss, screeching wood, and gentle guitar strums make up the majority of Fischer’s meditation on the Pacific coast. Throughout the recording, we hear an enormous restraint in the balance between organic sound, minimal electronic processing, and the pause of breathing instruments. Fischer’s control of individual sounds within the abstract and physical space, culminates into the warm harmonic waves that fill my morning studio with atonal reverberations and a glowing hum. Based out of Portland, Oregon, Fischer’s focus on composition is guided by experimentation with field recordings, self constructed instruments, and sometimes pure chance. Coupled with visual art, Fischer is also responsible for curating vision+hearing – a series of audio/visual events facilitating collaborations between musicians and filmmakers. His recordings under the map~map moniker are self released via his dustbreeding.com site, where throughout 2009, Fischer documented one creative project per day for an entire year. Monocoastal is a welcome addition to the 12k catalog, fitting the label’s unique aesthetic.
2) Mapping has come a long way in the past decade, so much so that we can almost touch the rough edges of the coast nowadays simply by pressing a button wirelessly. Marcus Fischer's Monocoastal takes us on a drifting aural travelogue that meanders from pinpoint locations into banal stretches that hint of human existence and faded memories. These subtle tracks are like translucent sketches where the depth of field is tripped and stretched rather gently by the expanse of fine tonal values. Fischer's strings and pings on "Mossbank" and the title track reverb in a Cascadian glow at midday and don't look away from the stream of deadpan light ahead.
If Monocoastal were to imply a topographical line, it has succeeded in being anything but straight ahead. One of the more captivating qualities of this record is that there is a sense of distance, of anonymity. It's as though Fischer is watching, waiting, ready to pounce in dynamic tension but instead takes a big breath and exhales into a new passage. Perhaps the result is a form of ritualized circular breathing, like that of a conditioned jazz brassman going full tilt. The softly undulating gestures are like a landmass meeting the recessing sea. This is especially pronounced on the sumptuous "Shape to Shore." It is the tease of the waves that draws the ear in, it's fairly subliminal yet the field recordings blend with the processing like fog lifts from the glassy surface of water at high tide.
Lethargic passages lead into restrained moments made from electric hiss and whispers of percussion, almost like wind moving through an empty room. You can loosely picture a simple backyard, an old gated fence, clothesline and the ghosts of those playing mere yards away. But rather than pure melancholic nostalgia, Monocoastal brings a bit of poker-faced earthliness to a genre often too abstract or clinical. "Between Narrow and Small" is one of those classic ambient tracks that draws you in with its patient phrasing and tiny goings-on. Still there remains this lingering hesitance throughout, a somewhat converging skeptical dialectic emerges—as if Fischer is both questioning and observing nature simultaneously.
3) A little personal background story about the following review of Portland-based multi-talent Marcus Fischer’s debut on the 12k label, Monocoastal, which has been released in 2010: I’ve bought it on CD in the same year, but during my commutes and university-related tasks at the time, the album got lost somehow, and I’m sure I’ll find it in the attic with a bunch of other gems and dobs, so don’t shed any tears. During a recent vacation I’ve decided to finally review Fischer's work, since it has grown on me as I’ve listened to it in several seasons, on various occasions and during different tasks. One can say that I was really in the mood to write my thoughts right now, in that very moment. Bad luck! I didn’t take it with me in digital form, nor was it in the cloud, and even though I have listened to the album time and again, there are passages I haven't memorized yet, so what to do? Buying it again, since the 12k Summer sale was on. The luck of the draw! You’re about to read a somewhat glowing review of a fragile Drone/Glitch hybrid. Its several ornaments make it special, but could possibly turn off fans of the genre: Monocoastal doesn’t present balmy synth washes that tuck the listener in. Nor is it a proper Glitch album with eclectic percussive particles. It is, to make things easy, an Ambient album that focuses as much on guitar melodies, synth textures and misty field recordings as it does on the concept of space and emptiness. Fischer’s music is characterized by holes and niches that lack any trace of sound. They have to be filled first, and this is done through the concoction of manifold sound layers. The listener hence encounters a constant dependance on sound, sustain and space; this triad begs for your attention, and while Monocoastal is perfectly capable of enhancing various tasks on your desk, a concentrated, dedicated listening session expands the soundscape even more. As I’m mentioning every so often in my reviews, I am no synesthete, but the coalescence of the album artwork, as photographed by Marcus Fischer himself, with the music is not only persuasive, but very poignant as well. If you know the 12k label by heart, you own this album anyway. Some people even own it twice, hehe. But if you aren’t sure about the frostiness of the Glitch genre, the concept of emptiness in Ambient music or guitars in general, I invite you to read about the eight tracks off Monocoastal in greater detail.
Wave Atlas is the point of departure, and right from the get-go does the skilled artist present a superimposition of entangled layers which are incredibly fragile and tenuous on their own, but form a mesmeric flow in tandem: whether it’s the the heavily filtered acoustic guitar twangs, the wafting haze of pink noise, the various crackles and clicks whose sustain conflates with the forlorn background or the ambiguously piercing gentleness of the gelid lo-fi drones, each element is equipollent to the next. Even the lack of sound is essential, as this setting allows a liquedous interplay between empty alcoves and noise-fueled fissures. The tranquility of this floats through every pore of the multiple textures and leads to the best characteristic trait of Wave Atlas: its Asian tone sequences which are further boosted by Fischer’s way of plucking his guitar, as it resembles a Japanese three-stringed shamisen or koto. Nowhere is it mentioned that the artist had Far Eastern coasts in mind, and yet does the flavor of the guitars in juxtaposition to the crystalline pastel colors of the synths create a placeless dreamscape that relies as much on the aural grain as it does on the melodies themselves. This opener is deeply relaxing and one of my favorite Ambient compositions ever created, as it is loaded with several sounds and yet feels eminently lightweight. It really rocks my world! The following Mossbank launches with a blurred field recording of a bustling craft enterprise (or so it seems), another creek of swirling static noise, positively spectral synth sweeps and turquoise-tinted acoustic guitar licks with both a crunchier attack rate and a solemn jolliness attached. Since the melodies are stretched and played very slowly, the strings resonate with the insinuated vault-like backdrop, and the depicted microscopic gaze refers back to the track title. The concept of depth is definitely one of the signature characteristics, and while the mood is slightly melancholic, the warmth of the strings forms another oxymoron, namely a majestic humbleness. Monocoastal (Part 1) resumes the phantasmagoric mood of its predecessors, but truly fathoms the concept of misty ocean-resembling waves, frosty clicks and hypnotic hissing. These elements are intermingled with multiple layers of guitar drones, all of them inheriting the endemically sublime aura. Mercurial music box-like scintillae illuminate the Drone structure near the end, and it is here at the latest that one realizes the withdrawal of the foggier ingredients. The next mélange, Cascadia Obscura, provides an interesting counterpoint, as it is admittedly built with the same molecules and particles, but sounds much fuller, more saturated and definitely sun-soaked due to the meandering bass drones, the return of a certain Far Eastern tonality à la Tetsu Inoue and downright coruscating guitar sparks which literally jump right at the listener. They aren’t acidic or hazardous but eupeptic and gleeful. Ambient fans who favor more melodious settings will be pleased with this particular tune.
Wind And Wake is a celestial field recording-focused arrangement of the aquatic kind, with a panorama of grey-colored pouring rain, embellished traffic noise and golden-shimmering electro-acoustic drones that fend off any glints of a potentially doleful atmosphere thanks to the thermal heat Fischer unleashes with the help of cleverly used flanger filters and vivifying bass bursts. The sounds occasionally shift into corrosively vitriolic places, but this just shows the great power that is needed to fight the melancholia, as the strings gleam and glow in order to outshine the gurgling drench. It is during the last minute that the formerly hidden Far Eastern melody is put to the forefront, resembling the peaceful scheme of Brian Eno's early works, especially so Music For Airports of 1978. Shape To Shore ventures into converse realms: the warmth of abyssal bass guitar eruptions meshes with the sky-high clangs of cowbells and plinking wind chimes, creating a nostalgic reel that is both mollifying and at times portentous, as gloomy synth streams in minor reside around the four-and-a-half minute mark; suddenly, the wide space in the background becomes hollow, but after a course correction, the guitar tones recapture the coziness. Shape To Shore shows that darker undertones can be found in Marcus Fischer’s work, but neither do they distract from the overarching theme of Monocoastal, nor do they alienate the listener, let alone destroy this composition. And sure enough does the penultimate track Between Narrow And Small return to the auspicious silkiness of guitar drones, but with an added twist, as the opening phase is unsuspectedly lively, with heavily pulsating staccato bubbles complete with incidental screeches and delicate crackles. The pulses get more streamlined as the song progresses and makes room for the wonderful warmness of the guitars with an added opalescence in form of both a twinkling glockenspiel-like luminescence and enigmatic whistles, but they are never completely out of sight and continue to chuggle through the track. Also worth mentioning is the different sound of the used guitar. It seems as if Fischer used a steel guitar on here, but I might be wrong; the dreaminess is nonetheless expanded and the guitar sounds gorgeous, as does the sustain of the strings that is allowed to float into the distance. The final Monocoastal (Part 2) introduces a fulminant ground loop, probably the drone sound that is easiest to create. Melodies are exchanged for a presentation of various filters and textures: one-note synth strings, bells, clicks and guitars meet, mesh and depart, all the while the ground loop is wafting as the golden thread through the arrangement. This is without a doubt the most experimental of Fischer’s assembled tracks, despite the implied monotony and scarcity of the carved out melodies. Different tone pitches and characteristic traits flourish incessantly until Monocoastal ends on a heavenly polyphonous, vibraphone-esque note.
Monocoastal is a strong "second debut" by Marcus Fischer on the 12k label, and I can once again not exactly pinpoint whether the front artwork resembles the music or vice versa. Different hues and tinges of blue are all over the album, and there are scents of grey and gold intermixed that mainly derive from the deliberately hazy field recordings and the powerful yet fragile guitar setups. The opening track Wave Atlas is, at least to my ears, an essential masterpiece to which I keep coming back time and again, as it is perfectly balanced and provides the right amounts of peacefulness, non-clichéd Far Eastern tone sequences, an intriguing interplay between sound and space as well as an exceptional feeling of contentment. I don’t know why it is exactly this track that causes me to rave about it, for the remaining material delivers exactly the same successful formula of guitar layers and scintillating bells. Synth washes are scattered few and far between, and they’re never colossal or bodacious but always carefully injected into the tracks. I am stressing this fact because Fischer doesn’t want to encapsulate the listener in-between piles of synth layers. Guitar patterns and the textures of the various particles and clicks are much more important, even more so in regard to the ubiquitous backdrop of each composition: emptiness. Since there are no synth washes to be found, the omission of sound becomes an important instrument itself, for it allows the sustain to float into the distance and the bells to sparkle all the lovelier. This perception doesn’t even change when a diffuse field recording or source of pink noise is added, as these whitewashed, moiré-like devices aren’t played on a constant volume level, but oscillate and breeze and therefore depend on quiet surroundings as well. Monocoastal is a strong, surprisingly melodious release, but if you are wary of Drone music that is penetrated by gaps and leaks of space and quiescence, I advise you to listen to both Marcus Fischer’s real and astonishingly well-tempered debut Arctic/Antarctic or Collected Dust which adopts the crystalline structures of his 12k debut, but features a lot of Drone tracks in the traditional sense, namely with a constant flow of sound waves.
4) Monocoastal perpetuates the move 12k has made in recent times towards a pastoral electro-acoustic style as sound artist Marcus Fischer blankets his album's guitar inflections with layers of hiss and myriad found sounds. Song titles alone—“Wave Atlas” and “Mossbank” representative of them—clearly allude to the music's organic, nature-based qualities. Inspiration for the project was Fischer's movements along the West Coast of America over the last couple of decades, and consequently the tracks are furnished with field recordings that suggest the tranquility of depopulated shorelines. Fischer brings a painterly eye to the material, adding dabs of found sounds—among them a dusty piano and xylophone made of metal wrenches—to spacious settings that meander exploratively. Assembled from guitars, lap harps, melodicas, ukelele, home-made instruments, and cassette recorders, it's a scenic and richly evocative recording that, even if one weren't familiar with the project's background, would on its own terms conjure picturesque associations. That ‘aquatic' dimension, by the way, is one other 12k artists have explored recently too, with Taylor Deupree's Shoals, Seaworthy + Matt Rosner's Two Lakes, and Willits + Sakamoto's Ocean Fire related variations on the theme, and the guitar-based character of Monocoastal is likewise echoed by the 12k releases 1897 and Sleeping Pills by Seaworthy and Pillowdriver, respectively.
The material has its strongest impact when experienced cumulatively rather than as individual pieces. Despite its wayward, abstract character—one hears smatterings of organ threading through the acoustic guitar plucks and textural crackle and pops— “Mossbank” nevertheless coheres into a peaceful setting of quietly alluring drift. During “Monocoastal 1,” treated slivers of electric guitar punctuate a thick mass of hiss while flickering accents suggest sunlight reflecting off of water. With electric piano fragments and guitar plucks having established a secure base, “Cascadia Obscura” otherwise evokes an impression of wind blowing across barren seaside plains and the creak of a battered screen door gently swinging open in the breeze. “Wind and Wake” evokes the outdoors in the hum of electrical wires that sing amidst the distant roar of the ocean, while “Between Narrow and Small” features guitar fragments that scuttle like crabs on a sandy shore. Each piece exudes a worn character that suggests weathering by a combination of time and the natural elements, and as a result a nostalgic tone emerges as one attends to the material. Adorning the release are Fischer's own photographs, which, appropriately enough, appear similarly worn as a result of their having been shot with expired Polaroid film.
#project hail mary
#the amazing digital circus
#photography
