Lorenzo Gómez Oviedo—Hebra

Hebra is the latest in Lorenzo Gómez Oviedo’s quietly expanding catalogue. Like Cielo and others before it, Hebra takes the form of one track, reclining itself across a spacious forty-ish minutes.

Its beginnings are melodic, even ecclesiastical; what sounds like the ghost of a gospel organ, displaced in time, extends its notes to unnatural lengths. The timbre is unmistakably clerical. It’s music the church wall retains, soaked and stretched through its wood, when the congregation are tucked up at home. There’s a profound contrast between this quasi-religious mood, and the tree which decorates Hebra’s cover. Sounds rooted in the traditions of the organised church are repurposed for an almost pagan sense of immanence. The Mujica poem which accompanies Hebra speaks of naming absence—and what else, after all, is God? The wait; the silence; the space. Absence is where we locate divinity.

This all positions Hebra as ethereal, but it actually has a deeply-rooted relationship with the material world. Hebra finds its punch in concrete sounds; brushed cymbals, delicately controlled feedback, and (in the most overt intrusion of the material world) the sound of rainfall. Rainfall in ambient music is normally a signaller of the hokey side of new-age. But here, it’s ingeniously mixed so low you could mistake it for surface noise.

And Hebra is too dissonant for new-age ears, too; quietly wringing tension, exhausting the moment for everything it’s got. Chords argue over one another, sounds reach the point of feeding back before being halted in the nick of time. This dissonance is never uncomfortable, instead “seeking”, like a flâneur who pretends they’re going anywhere but the coffee shop. Hebra diverts, diverges, self-interrupts—but it knows what it’s doing, and it stays the course.

Hebra is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Will Guthrie—Nist Nah

Of all the genres which fall under the dubious umbrella of “world music”, gamelan is perhaps the most popular. Gamelan itself is a style too big for one word, ranging from an ecstatic, traditional Javanese playing to a more furious contemporary Balinese. With Nist Nah, Will Guthrie tries his (presumably enormous) hand at Javanese gamelan, largely leaving the ordered chaos of his kit-based releases behind.

It’s an obvious match—Guthrie and gamelan carry convergent aims. There’s a hypnotic element to both; repetition which, koan-like, induces a break; a simultaneous order and disorder; but, above all, an overwhelming physicality. In listening, you can imagine every metallophone being hammered. While Nist Nah wears this effort on its sleeve, Guthrie does not do so to self-aggrandise or peacock. He instead shares a journey of discovery with the listener, the presence of which does not disrupt or diminish the work on the album.

And while none of this is hugely unfamiliar ground for the drummer—the ambient, droning, bell-packed atmosphere of Javanese gamelan is all through his 2012 track “Stones”—here, it is made much more prominent. The scattered thunder of Guthrie’s regular playing takes a back seat and is relegated, for the most part, to interludes like the frictional “Lit 1+2”. And with greater prominence comes greater extremity. “Elders” is such a muted track it could be one of the controlled soundscapes of Jacob Kirkegaard’s Four Rooms.

Guthrie closes Nist Nah with a gamelan learning exercise “Kebogiro Glendeng”, which feels effortlessly pulled off. It’s the polar opposite of Guthrie’s previous work, though. There is no sense whatsoever of the usual clattering improv—instead, a single phrase is repeated for its trance-inducing duration. Rather than build and crescendo, the piece abstracts itself, diminishing into a great reverberant wash that then gently fades. That it comes off so naturally is testament to Guthrie’s skill as a musician.

Nist Nah is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Salo Panto—Bait

Salo Panto are from Portland, Oregon—but their sound is such a patchwork of influences that it becomes stateless. But rather than diminish, this bestows them volatility and mystique. Bait stuffs its twenty-five minutes with surprises, never content to settle despite leaning into its repetitious grooves with full force. These divergent sounds rally into an irresistible whole. It's both bright and muggy at the same time; swamp mist ablaze with morning sunlight.

The best illustration of this is ‘Bait’, the EP’s title track. We begin with an unassuming, jangly guitar line which—over the course of seven expertly-executed minutes—transforms into a gargantuan riff. Nothing has changed, yet everything has. It’s reminiscent of post-revival Swans, who use repetition to bludgeon listeners into a trance. And, like Swans, Salo Panto expertly combine styles. ‘Bait’ is a cocktail of Savages-esque post-punk and freewheeling prog which somehow feels natural.

More influences can be felt elsewhere. The chorus of ‘Impatient Machine’ (“You’re so impatient machine”) feels built around Fall-like nonsense poetry which, unlike the work of M.E.S., does resolve into clear meaning. If there is one criticism to be made of Salo Panto, it’s this attachment to meaning. Lyrics can tend to the overt, the rational, even the didactic.

But to say that Salo Panto are nowhere near as radical as the Fall is moot—no band can be. They do exhibit a control and a collaborative spirit, though, which the enormity of M.E.S.’s ego always chased a hundred miles from any Fall release.

And it’s this control which is Salo Panto's ace in the hole. Without it, rock groups can loosen, rattle free of their own concept, and descend into jam-band dick-measuring. But on Bait, solos and meaty drum fills service the listener and the rest of the band—not just the one playing.

Bait is available to purchase and stream here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Rrose—Hymn to Moisture

Rrose’s style is both familiar and inimitable. His similarity to associates SØS Gunver Ryberg and Paula Temple anchors a dark sound shot through with very individual mastery. The prolific producer has made waves with a long series of EPs, mixes and live sets (I was introduced to Electronique.it Podcast 153 by a friend), but Hymn to Moisture is his first solo full-length effort.

Rrose’s ability to maintain interest over the course of an hour was never in question—but this album is, nevertheless, a gladly-received gift. Stand-out track ‘Bandage’ is Rrose’s modus operandi compressed into a lean six minutes. The track switches between eerie ambience and severe, sawtoothed chaos. It’s a balanced piece which manages both to relieve and provoke anxiety. Somehow, two opposing modes muscle each other on and off stage without the music feeling indecisive or half-cooked.

These grand washes undulate through the album as a whole, as wired and woozy intertwine. Hymn to Moisture is self-disruptive in a gratifying way. It’s hard to believe something as industrial as ‘Columns’ sits in the same album as the lush ‘Horizon’. Stranger still is that Rrose pulls it off with what feels like minimal effort.

Just as with Ryberg’s Entangled last year, there is a stunning evocation of mood, technical mastery, and transcendence beyond the label of techno. But that’s always the mark of good music: being unable to put the thing into words without feeling reductive. In a way, that’s the point, isn’t it? Music is a medium through which we explore areas of the extra-linguistic, extra-symbolic, and uncategorisable—but not everyone does it with as much style as this.

Hymn to Moisture is available for purchase and stream here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe