(03.14.09) The Slow Flow label was launched just last year by Sapporo artist Ryo Nakata, aka Ryonkt. On this keynote first release he gathers like-minds and label-mates (a few familiar rings from Resting Bell) for what review shorthand might reduce to a “drone” album. This, however, would be too reductive of what is a varied set of ambient-inclined compositions ranging in texture from gentle to steely, warm to glacial, with the odd grittier visitor.
Slow Flow is inaugurated by Pawn – Hideki Umezawa to his Mum, with works already slated for Symbolic Interaction and Dynamophone; just as well, as the promise shown by “Through the Square” demands more than the five minutes allowed to indulge it here, lacing aether drone with warm chord releases, and threading it through with flickering fields and glitch filigree. Celer propose “Stilettos At Sunrise,” a sparser than usual etude for the micro-symphonic duo; shy sounds are drawn out, held up to the light, tilted this way and that to cultivate their cadences. Bigger and less perfectly formed is an over-extended effort from Portland’s Cloudburst, who takes an age to fiddle with volume and gate in a vain attempt to force some thin tones into gripping tintinnabulations; his “Salt” proves its worth only by switching strategy, letting its latter part waft by in a euphonic fog, obliterating memories of its former life. Ryonkt himself then puts in an opportune appearance to illuminate the way forward. His “Window” opens onto slivers of sustained tonefloat comparing timbral notes through aperture and contraction before discreet synthetic sweeps swoop to conquer over a cirrus of brass/woodwind-like held notes. Quietly riveting. As is Elian, whose “Seated On An Arm Chair Of Orange Colored Wood” nods to Tim Hecker and Paul Bradley – sweet cascades edged with greater grit and cycles of percussive patter. Segue, a Vancouver visitor, projects “A View Of The Frozen Lake,” all woozy and warbly with a wistful post-rock tinge – elegiac arcs falling in the wake of Eluvium by way of Andrew Chalk. “The Last Day Before You Go” suggests Porzellan has studied the low-end hum ethnographies of Potter and Coleclough, though he’s not in thrall to these Dronemeisters; a cloud of grave sinewave slowly acquires a silver lining of lighter harmonic flow – the soundtrack to a somewhat sour mouth sweetening up at the edges. Glenn Ryszko then gets backwoods guitar-y on us, his “Herfstkleuren” proposing simple drawn out chord pluckings attended by kids-playtime peripheralia. It’s a pleasant pause before Entia Non quests both high and low with his viscid flow, streaming sound stories from the field and seas, leaving Ian Hawgood to see out the angels to the stars (of the Lid).
A well judged selection, then, Sounds of Slow Flow Vol. 1 lets a coherent in-house style organically emerge; one for those who like their experimental ambient shot through with harmony more than noise, but with a textural twist or two. It serves notice of a label for new ambienteers to watch, mapping out an ambit of quiet but compelling tough-tender tone poetry that shuns cotton wool as much sandpaper.
Sounds of Slow Flow Vol. 1 is out now on Slow Flow.
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