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.

Emaciator - Appease [monorail trespassing]

The longer Jon Borges works under his Emaciator guise, the softer his recordings seem to get. Having sucked me in with Resentment, the CD he recorded for Alex Cobb’s Students of Decay label, he blew me away with last years Reflection, put out by William Hutson’s Accidie imprint. Both of those previous full-lengths fit neatly in harsh(ish)/drone territory, but in recent months the harsh edge of Borges’ output seems to have subsided. Coveting an LP from late last year on Not Not Fun was already demonstrating a preference for a smoother wave-shape and if there was any doubt as to the general direction then along came the release of a new album, titled Austere, by Borges’ flagship harsh noise project Pedestrian Deposit (also on monorail) which, while being richer in detail than most of the Emaciator material, also exhibits this shift towards “bliss / meditation / therapy “ (as Borges himself puts it). I imagine die-hard fans of the early Pedestrian Deposit material must be finding this progression a bitter pill. Even myself, having placed the Reflection 2LP squarely inside last year’s top ten was slightly disappointed to find the square-tooth edge of the Emaciator sound gradually filing itself back to tonality. With his general trajectory in mind, this 22 minute tape continues just as you would expect it to. Certainly the most tonal material I’ve heard yet from Emaciator. Two sides of sky-gazing drift, “to reach a state of peace”.

Considering the wealth of quality and not-so-quality drone musicians shimmering and glistening about in the underground at present it’s pretty hard to make your presence felt, but whether the thought of Borges’ permanently joining these ranks brings a smile or a frown, he’s clearly damn good at it. A strong tape, though if I had to recommend just one of this latest batch of monorails it would be his new Pedestrian Deposit album.

monorail trespassing

Work/Death - Contained in Proper Place Names [monorail trespassing]

Solo outing from Scott Reber on Jon Borges’ (Pedestrian Deposit, Emaciator) label. The sleeve bears a little three line text (haiku?) which ends “garbage in. garbage out”. I can’t work out if this is supposed to be a comment on the music or some sort of sideways snipe at capitalism, but anyway – on to the sound. There’s a semblance of melody trapped underneath the glass-shard landslide which dominates here. Sounding something like one of Terry Riley’s organ dervishes being forced through a wood chipper, ground to dust and scattered in the wind. Perhaps. On Side B the tonal bed is far more static, long chords are held just within audibility beneath a mass of disruption. It opens sounding like it could have been recorded on a clifftop blustery day or beneath the tarmac of a busy motorway, until about a third of the way in when it ducks into a tunnel for shelter allowing the warm tones to wrap around and the wind and traffic to blast past and here it hides for the rest of the side. There’s plenty more of Scott’s work on its way to me in the near future. This one has whetted my appetite nicely.

monorail trespassing