New Music Friday: Oak Drone, Banjo Minimalism, Slam Slosh
Oct. 2 releases include Daniel Bachman, Allison de Groot & Rich Ruth, Marta Salogni & Stefano Pilia, Sarah Hennies & Tristan Kasten-Krause, David Dunn & Apartment House, Ungraceful
Of the six album recommendations below, five of them traverse ambient, drone and contemporary classical music. Smarty pants music, I guess, but always grounded in revealing and expanding the human experience. Oh, and then there's some stupid-ass slam, too. I contain multitudes.
Stream the Viking's Choice Guide to New Music Friday mixtape (tracks 1-6 are from the albums reviewed, the rest are singles released within the last week). Follow me on Bandcamp and check out previous mixes via Buy Music Club.
Daniel Bachman, The Witness Tree
Annea Lockwood once said her river recordings are not a document, but a "special state of mind and body." Bachman not only captures the sonic vibrations of Virginia chestnuts and oaks but enters The Green like a fingerstyle Swamp Thing: Every sound (natural and noisy) is imbued with an ancient history — of ravaged land, carceral violence, enslavement — that still speaks to us through the roots.
Allison de Groot & Rich Ruth, Allison de Groot & Rich Ruth
A 21st century take on Fripp and Eno's ambient experiments of the 1970s, largely built around an old time instrument: clawhammer banjo. Transcendent, thoughtful music that imagines another world.
Marta Salogni & Stefano Pilia, Phren
Ambient music as mobile. Colorful guitar fuzz and surreal shapes hung from drooping tape loops, in a perpetual dance of delicate motion.
Sarah Hennies & Tristan Kasten-Krause, Prisoner's Cinema
A slow descent into the abyss. Devoid of light, the sonic equivalent of vantablack, gongs and singing bowls create a sphere of the unknown as bowed double bass moors us to a reality we fear to face. Pure acoustic doom.
David Dunn & Apartment House, The Great Liberation Through Hearing
An hour-long piece for amplified string quartet and processed voice that drones as much as it shrieks. Every timbre and texture shifts with subtle gestures, yet is charged with an otherworldly tension.
Ungraceful, Silence Between Stars
For I am but a simple man; I like dumb riffs chugged in my slam. I do not like to think too hard; my bowels slosh in a boneyard. BLEEEGGGRRRGGGHHHHHHHH.
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