Mount Analog ~ New Skin
This album is a
generous treat for fans of leftfield improvisors who also find themselves
attracted to evocative soundworlds. Notable contributors to this project include
Eyvind Kang on viola, Bill Frissell on guitar and Tucker Martine who produces,
supplies field recordings and plays harmonica, omnichord as well as a host
of other instruments. Martine’s production at times suggests hot Southern
afternoons spent drifting down rivers on lazy currents, but don’t be
misled by this observation to the conclusion that there’s anything at
all indolent about this music. Rather, its tonal colours have been carefully
adjusted: earth tones tweaked toward the golden, upper registers enriched
with vibrant azures. Martine subtly guilds found sounds onto layers of acoustic
and electric instrumentation. These include the types of gently off-kilter
sounds encountered when a radio drifts off its station, the tired yell of
a blues musician or smalltown streetnoise heard from the middle distance.
Such elements are like filigreed dust patterns or the sunlit shadow of a lace
curtain cast upon an interior. There’s something time out of mind about
Mount Analog: it’s as though the music was recorded two or three generations
ago, even though the cut and paste collaging and the occasional burst of heavy
percussion are notably contemporary. Much of this album provides the sort
of sensory delight experienced on reading Bruno Schulz’s descriptions
of home (“...blazing with sunshine and scented with the sweet melting
pulp of golden pears...”) in his novel The Street Of Crocodiles. Mount
Analog’s New Skin isn’t the work of somebody secreted away in
one on one communion with their computer, instead it’s a lovingly crafted
and very beautiful work which surely reflects an intimately observed engagement
with the lived world.
Colin Buttimer
March 2004