The drones of Herzog, born Bill Bawden, aren’t content to be content (that’s “content” without the accent on the first syllable). As heard on the five-track, half-hour First Summer and the Running Dream, the drones are rough things. They do crazy eights between your speakers, they chop the fluff off of cumulus hazes and reveal the sharp supporting structures beneath, they rattle like someone’s snuck in a bag of android crickets, and they summon up hearty submerged sounds that might give the unprepared listener a case of the bends.
And that’s just on the track “Our Friends Save Us from Drowning” (MP3). Then there’s the broken loop of “Lately I’ve Been Dreaming of Drinking Sound from a Fountain,” in which the familiar locked groove seems like someone’s replaced their phonograph needle with a sickle (MP3). All five tracks use repetition to reduce the impact of their raw materials, but raw they still are, and the album’s all the better for its lack of refinement.
Full release at restingbell.net.