Lorenzo Gomez Oviedo—Una pluma en el oleaje

Una pluma en el oleaje is a spacious and organic EP from Lorenzo Gomez Oviedo. Incorporating field recordings of the creaking flora of Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego, this work displays a brittle nativity. It’s both as tough and as fragile as bark.

The EP opens with a percussive flutter—something like bat’s wings, or rocks skipping down a slope—which suggests descent from a great altitude. We then breach the canopy, and plunge into thick ambience. In its opening moments, Una pluma… bears comparison to new age veterans like Terry Riley—but that’s not to say it’s dinner party music for hippies. Oviedo grasps for divinity. He fully explores inner and outer worlds, and dodges the self-care soundtracking that new age can sometimes settle for.

Song titles are mysterious triptychs which glue natural and unnatural elements. As well as describing mediums used for the pieces, they provide an evocation of mood. There is a calculated mystery to Una pluma… which provokes consideration of some great unknown.

Pieces incrementally lengthen in a slowing cycle of breath. Structurally, Una pluma… is a hypnagogic lure; a well which yawns to suck the listener in. ‘Huida, temblores, silencio’, the EP’s second track, boasts a tanpura drone that batters you into a trance (used to similarly dazzling effect in Kelly Lee Owens’ ‘8’). The experience of Una pluma… is, then, a sinking sleep—a cosy darkness that stretches further ahead with your every step.

‘Plástico, niebla, hojas’ wakes things up again, and is the most melodic piece on here. It’s a joyous and revelatory closer, one which feels like an unveiling. But with its truth, revealed at the heart of the forest, comes something discordant and frightening. There's overpowering sublimity, and chords which melt into each other’s space creating atonality. A forest of sound, its many voices sing in complex harmony. With Una pluma…, Oviedo snares us from our perch on the mesa into haunted forests, shows us the leaf-littered floor, and lets us reascend afterwards.

Una pluma en el oleaje is available for streaming and free download here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Bardo Todol / M. M. Peres / Úgjü Sectas — Adzer

Adzer is a collaborative tape with its fingers in quite a few pies. It's boldly broad in its content. But where broadness can sometimes deaden a release, Adzer shines.

We hover above soundscapes, no floor beneath our feet; observing from a dispassionate, unplaceable viewpoint. Organic and inorganic rhythms collide and collude. Paranoiac loops flitter by, switching between themselves restlessly. It's the audio equivalent of Gaspar Noé's Into the Void; unpredictable, scuzzy and overwhelming.

We are hovering over indistinct scenes. We arrive after they begin, we leave before they end.

Various techniques are employed to evoke this sense of movement. Bardo Todol brings concrète, field recordings of the mundane suffused with uncanny metallic friction (think the crying which opens Boris' ‘Buzz-In’). M. M. Peres' hosts bells and chimes, and approaches the joyful transcendence and hypnagogia of spiritual jazz. Úgjü Sectas stabs at classic, Parmegiani-style acousmatic chaos. Glitchy elements crash the work, with elegance, into the present day.

But greater than the individual achievements of this releases' contributors is its overall cohesion. What could easily have lacked direction instead cleaves its path straight to the sublime. This is a patchwork of many colours, waiting for you to wrap yourself in it.

Adzer is available for purchase and streaming here. An accompanying short film is also available here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Will Guthrie — Some Nasty

Great improvisers always have one foot dangling over the cliff's edge. Their work seems ready to crumble under itself; to tangle, snag or melt like a cassette tape. Will Guthrie is no exception to this rule. The Australian percussionist works in many spaces, and with a wide roster of collaborators. But the work is invariably electrifying and dangerous.

Some Nasty sees Guthrie performing alongside Indonesian gamelan and gong players, and delving into a new world of electronic backing tracks and esoteric field recording. As ever, the atmosphere is heavy. Dark clouds are punctuated by clattering raindrops of noise. But some surprises, like a spirited homage to My Chemical Romance's 'Black Parade', liven proceedings. And the extreme energy of Some Nasty's noisier passages will bring out anyone's stank face.

One movement on Side B slips into an irresistible groove. It's a conventional sort of playing rarely heard from Guthrie, but all the more successful for it. Bordered on both sides by erratic and challenging traditional percussion, it's a stark and welcome contrast.

This release as a whole benefits from its diversity. Phrases and moods appear like cats eyes, rushing in in a bright and surprising surge. It's as difficult to pin down as one of Guthrie's cacophonous crescendos. Perhaps he's the only one who can truly keep track of it all.

Will Guthrie’s Some Nasty is available for stream and purchase here. Tetema, a fantastic collaborative project with Mike Patton and Anthony Pateras, can be found here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe