With Smyth’s ‘Senescence’ cassette release, Sunshine Ltd. just adds another beauty to their catalogue. Regarding my enthusiastic review of ‘In Streams’ by David Andree (and I don’t have to revoke any part of my positive impressions after some further listens) this label obviously is able to take me by surprise once again. Never heard of Smyth before to be honest and I’m also not really interested in Senescence (biological aging of plants and organisms) at all, but the music that he presents is truly worth every listen.
The complete work is characterized by its slowness and calmness. Smyth “…focused on every sound having an easily heard life cycle, while the constant use of field recordings as the canvas serves the purpose of symbolizing the whole of the biological process continuing on without regard to anything else coming of age, or passing from existence as a life form back into dirt.” (quoted from the label’s album description)
The sounds seem to be mainly based on Rhodes recordings, some guitar and piano have been added and processed. Field recordings are sometimes placed in the background. The result is a truly organic collage of natural sounds, effect layers and somewhat calmly droning material. From my point of view the most outstanding part of the album is ‘Walk’, ‘Horizon’ and ‘Senex’, three pieces that definitely can stand alone as well as they could be combined to just one long-form composition. The harmonic development in these pieces is as interesting as the overall sound, sometimes beautifully clear, sometimes impermeable, textured and eerie.
Sadly I don’t have a tape deck anymore so that I had to listen through both Sunshine Ltd. cassettes that I reviewed so far – David Andree and Smyth – in the digital format. But when this label continues to release beauties like this I’ll definitely get me tape deck again just to have the chance to listen to these works in the determined format! Can’t wait to hear more…
[ 4,7 / 5 ]
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