Ulaan Passerine — New Evening (Worstward Recordings)
The spike fiddle
New Evening by Ulaan Passerine
Steven R. Smith has made a lot of records. This may seem a matter of necessity, since most of them come out in small numbers. But the necessity that they express is probably not economic; let’s be real, most people putting out LPs in pressings of a few hundred could probably make more money mowing their neighbors’ lawns than they will by making another record. It’s more likely that Smith makes music that wants to be made, or at least that he likes the process of making it enough to keep beavering away in a back room of his Los Angeles house after twenty years.
And it also seems to be the case that Smith makes records with particular ends in mind. One way to decode his intent is to note the name under which the music is released. Each recording alias has its own recording methodology, and Ulaan Passerine is the one where he pulls it all together. UP pieces tend to emphasize melody over distortion, and they usually span the available space of the analog format (cassette or LP) that bears them. New Evening comprises two side-long tracks, “Evening” and “Dawning.” The two compositions are made up of shorter passages, which melt in and out of each other like dissolving film images.
