Austin, Texas-based experimental composer / producer Greg Headley first emerged onto LA’ indie-rock scene in the mid nineties as a member of Tintamarre, but since 1996 he’ released no less than eight albums of solo compositions under his own name, with six of them being released on his own 28 Angles label. His ninth full-length release in total and the follow-up to last year’ “There Comes A Violent Love / Pulse’, “24 Carat Abnormalities’ is apparently influenced primarily by Headley’ Eastern European travels during summer 2007, and sees him constructing all sounds and melodic motifs with a combination of guitar and software instruments. In some senses the nine minute long “January 77′ represents something of a forbidding opening track here, as it emerges from the tentative swirl of what sounds like a treated cello being bowed, the mournful minor keys motif being repeated over and over to the point where it verges of becoming monotonous, only for a sudden shearing wall of distorted power-noise electronics to completely fill every inch of the frequency spectrum with what resembles an acidic cloud of pressurised gas. From there, the punishing noise gradually begins to resolve itself into a cascading flow of almost liquid digital noise, as the entire bottom drops out unexpectedly, leaving proceedings floating in blissfully ambient space, as life-support machine-esque beeps slowly tick by.
After a wash of digitally edited shortwave radio noise, “The Sun Blind’ casts things in a far more fragile yet still markedly sombre setting, as stark, howling treated guitar chords arc off a frigid-sounding backdrop of pulsing electronic ambience, before “Days Of My Bolshevik Youth’ sees Headley crafting vast, orchestral atmosphere reminiscent of a film score as majestic synthetic strings float out beneath the tentative wander of buzzing guitar chords, resulting in a moment that certainly highlights the comparisons that have previously been made between Headley’ work and “Before And After Science’-era Eno. While the predominant aesthetic explored here is for the most part and brooding, melancholic one, “Folk Tone’ offers a brief glimpse of sunlight, as delicate jazz-soul keys drift like raindrops through a trail of idyllic ambience. Well worth investigating – there’ also a free companion track composed completely of shortwave radio recordings made in Prague titled “Tower Z Now Transmitting’ available to download at www.28angles.com/24carat.
