Earn - Down The Well [monorail trespassing]

Having just read Murakami’s The Wind Up Bird Chronicles earlier this year. I can’t help but see the title as a reference to the protagonist’s long afternoons spent at the bottom a dried up well behind a deserted house a few doors down. The epigraph on this tape reads “tell a pitiful story”, so maybe I’m onto something. I’ve got no idea who is behind Earn, however and the only clue given here is that Scott Reber is close at hand, providing cello on the opening track.

Of the three this is the longest of these monorail tapes, with three tracks on each side. Thick swarms of deep string noise dominate the opener, which sounds like it was recorded inside the instruments: wolf tones abound. Although I’d like to think this is a simple multitrack of acoustic recordings in the vein of (a very short version of) La Monte Young’s Just Charles and the Cello in the Romantic Chord, I’m guessing there must have been some processing or pedals involved somewhere along the line. Please is the most distant track of the six, the oscillator left running for a few minutes while in the background someone bumps about in the kitchen in search of a final beer, fumbles with their keys and brushes against the microphone on their way back into the room, before remembering that the tape is still running and twisting a couple of knobs which plunge us into thick woven wriggling mesh of sound that characterises the next three tracks, and straddle onto the second side. Much of this portion bears strong resemblance to Axolotl’s output, in places even touching the heights that he achieved on Telesma. Excellent stuff, two long sides of this dense wail would have been the easy option, nice to hear a different approach. The final track revisits the juxtaposition of acoustic scrabble with cable recorded pedal spew, I could swear that in the background someone with a runny nose is trying to peel the tape off their contact mic and has left the pedals plugged up in a feedback matrix all the while. I'm still in the dark as to the who and how of Earn, but will be tracking down more stuff by him/her/them.

All in all three strong tapes. Apparently monorail are on the move and would appreciate orders sooner rather than later so they can lessen the cost of shipping their stock across the country. Go on, give them a hand why don’t you.