A few months ago, I wrote liner notes for an album by Landrecorder, morning-afternoon-evening. Now, 2010 isn’t 1980, which means we needn’t wait another year for another record. A few Landrecorder pieces have drifted out since that one, including the four-song EP Fern Battles, which opens and then proceeds with a looped mix of elements. There’s a halo of breathy chanting, a strum of guitar, and what appear to be resonant field recordings. Small snatches of harmonica frame the piece, helping put it in the weird-folk tradition, and to make it all the more the sort of thing that Low fans dream of in between that band’s far more infrequent release schedule. The track is titled “Rita”:
What distinguishes it is how the least prominent element, that hazy background that may or may not be sounds of the “real” world, is in fact the most active element, in that it subsumes what rough edges persist in the chanting and strumming, making the whole thing a sonic cloud of near-pop effluvia.
Check out the previous Landrecorder album at feedbacklooplabel.blogspot.com.
Nice.