Melbourne musician Oscar Vincente Slorach-Thorn, known better as one of the founders of the Albert’s Basement collective, assembled this album-length recording anonymously over the course of a couple of months as a side-step from his role as the primary member of Two Bright Lakes band Psuche. Slorach-Thorn announced the album with little fanfare, and a solitary launch show at The Toff In Town in Melbourne.
Perhaps it is a tribute to Slorach-Thorn’s disregard for glory and pomp in the release of music, that this album is so breathtakingly well assembled, venturing further from the experimental pop of Psuche and into lo-fi drone and noise. The sound of this album announces itself immediately, opening up with tape-distorted processing of clarinet and saxophone that for a brief one and a half minutes rips at the very fabric of the original until it is lost in tape noise. The outlook of Slorach-Thorn here is akin to Francis Plagne, small fractions of songs or vocals occasionally surfacing above, or overlapping intricately formulated sound worlds. Similarly, everything over the course of the album manages to sound vulnerable and precious, even in the full range of volume and timbres utilised. “Twilight Girl” offers up a looped ukelele and the first appearance on the album of Slorach-Thorn’s voice, buried gradually over the course of the track, until it is barely perceptible among the silence. Even more robust elements through the album have a loving warmth to them – walls of blanket keyboard, cut up pieces of tape noise and voice that somehow retain their edge over the long journey of their treatment.
The mixing throughout this release is puzzling in the best way possible. Slorach-Thorn manages the evolution of the many sounds on this album with poise and grace; texturally, no point in the album can be faulted. Fourteen minute closer “When I Watched” is a showcase for this, layers upon layers of keyboard drone co-ordinated and distributed in and amongst each other, with a puppet like control for their movement from A to B. The most valuable moments on this album, are the ones where little peeps of pitch seep through noise and drones, whether in the form of tiny, tinny keyboard sounds (“Tinder”), voice (“Spinning Objects”) or songs (“Twilight Girl”, “3d”). The weight and counterpoint of these elements makes for a beautiful listening experience.
Marcus Whale
