This music is incredibly difficult to describe. It’s experimental in nature, electronic without the polished edges, dense soundscape music, with multiple sources mixed together until they become a strange uniformed whole. It may be improvised, it’s definitely highly processed in post production, though also electro acoustic, with a sweet majestic ramshackle feel. There’s a sticker on the cover from the record company that says this is ambient, yet at times it’s quite unsettling, these amorphous sound pieces brimming with peculiar half understood sounds and fragments of something you’re not sure whether you’re hearing or not. It appears to be coming from a mixture of field recordings and manipulated live instrumentation, and whilst it can feel quite warm and accessible, it’s definitely not what you’d commonly refer to as musical. Though as an approach to working with sound art you’d probably call it very musical, maybe even pop, thanks to the elements of groove and pattern building. The percussive and even melodic elements feel like they’re coming from another room, perhaps down the hall, and they’re always clouded by this amorphous haze which is mixed right up front. Beneath it there’s cascading piano notes, unclear vocals and when the percussion does come almost defiantly in the final thirty two and a half minute title track it takes on a lo fi Boredoms feel, a psychedelic jam of swirling sonic residue being pummeled forward by the relentless beats. It’s an album of hidden surprises. The music is surprisingly rich and detailed. The mixing decisions baffling, bold and fascinating.
It’s the work of New York musician and engineer/ producer Rusty Santos, who is not only blessed with a name perhaps better suited to life as a Mexican porn star, but boasts regular production work with Animal Collective (Sung Tongs), Panda Bear and also Ariel Pink. But it turns out that he also has four folksy singer songwriter orientated experimental solo albums out, and even has a hand running the United Acoustic Recordings label . Here he has teamed up with Jesse Lee of Gang Gang Dance fame and also Mina (who apparently comes from a classical background) for their second album. The trio play piano, guitar and drums, though listening to The Way We Are, you’d often be hard pressed to identify them in the mix. As a result you’d have to also list the mixing process itself as an instrument. It really sounds like little else around, normally a sonic soup is a bad thing, yet this manages to simultaneously feel mischievous and refined, it’s sound art but it’s with a lo fi indie, almost melodic feel. It’s also one of the most intriguing albums you’ll come across in quite a while.
Bob Baker Fish
