Zelienople – Hollywood (Under the Spire)

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Hollywood

Presentation counts for a lot these days. With nearly every release, no matter how obscure, hitting the so-called blogosphere within five minutes of promos being sent out, you’ve got to give people a reason to shell out for the real thing. Make it count.

Which is where Hollywood steps in. Its two twenty-minute tracks are split across a pair of 3” CD-Rs, which are housed inside an embossed, stamped arigato pak. Very simple, very elegant. Yes, these tracks would have fitted on a single 5” disc, but separating them like this not only makes them look and feel a little bit special, but segregates them the same way as the two sides of a vinyl record would. And with no direction given as to which should be considered the A-side and which the B, the two tracks exist quasi-independently of one another, though still exhibiting intrinsic links to one another.

“Drug Legs’ and “Misty’ are long-form drone pieces like those found on the now out-of-print CD-Rs Ghost Ship/Mary Celeste and Enemy Chorus. But actual similarities between these releases and Hollywood are minimal. Both tracks here are built around submerged film-noir soundtracks that bleed in and out of the mix in a most disorienting fashion, like waking in some kind of twilit Lynchian netherworld where all females are called dames and the bad guys are dwarves in cowboy suits. Or something. These ghostly strings and horns are surrounded by semi-typical Zelienople drones, built from warm, reverb-soaked tones and shimmering, peripheral ambience.

Sure, you could grab this off the internet for nicks – and since it’s limited to just 100 copies, some of you might have to – but Hollywood is worth the extra effort (and cash) to seek out the real thing.

Adam D Mills

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