The strings are filtered through feedback loops, clipped and set on repeat like an album that’s reached the end of its groove. These strings — acoustic guitars in particular, and also what sounds like a banjo — are heard amid rastery, digitized sound elements. And those same strings are likely distorted until they become those very sound elements, unrecognizable little segments of self-contained abstraction that musician Mark Templeton stiches together into layered compositions — some sustained cloud-like textures, others riff-like globules.
The tracks in question are the four that constitute his Holden into Ryley EP, which was released last year and is available for free download from the “media” page at the anticipaterecordings.com website. “As the Day Grows Longer” (MP3) is distinguished by a child’s xylophone and by an anguished, but understated, moan, which brings to mind Gavin Bryars’s Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet. “Goodbye to You” (MP3) takes perhaps the most active approach to fiddling with the strings, which start off all gingerly plucked, but are then tweaked as if being reiterated by a fading R2D2. The EP’s title cut, “Holden into Ryley” (MP3), is its quietest, gentle arrays of microsonic play against a lightly glitchy texture. And “I Cut Along Lines” (MP3) ventures into song form, with unaffected guitar and a short-circuiting female vocal that’s all the more emotional for its technical difficulties.
More on Templeton at fieldsawake.com.
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