It’s just two or three phrases on repeat. They are brief bits of sound, like a few keys on a piano recorded, the tape then left in a sink for a long weekend, then wiped off with a musty towel, left in the sun for days to dry, eaten at by insects, and only then played back. The sound is muddy and muffled, somehow both remote and warm. This is “contemplation i” by Black Thread. It’s a loop set on repeat, and then allowed to fade into another loop. There’s a lovely tension between the decaying sound and the rote mechanical nature of the repetition. Somewhere in between these two loops there is a backward-masked moment of transition, like the sound goes through a mirror and gets a glimpse of itself inside out. This is loop music meant to be listened to on repeat — loops to be looped.
Tracks originally posted for free download to soundcloud.com/blackthread. Black Thread is based in San Francisco and has a new release, Corpus, on the Tumeric Magnitudes label.