Mason speaks softly and with some difficulty, his reel-to-reel and cassette tape loops wobbling while his guitar strives to articulate itself in contention with scuffed and pitted electronic drone and radio waves.
If Josh Mason is prophesying doom, then he is one of the mildest zealots ever. His Jeremiad is said to to be “a personal lament for a country that thrives on the tragedy and sickness inherent in modern U.S. television programming.” And indeed, while critics and viewers alike regularly evoke the end of the world as we know it as they rail against each new mindless and unkind reality show, Mason speaks softly and with some difficulty, his reel-to-reel and cassette tape loops wobbling while his guitar strives to articulate itself in contention with scuffed and pitted electronic drone and radio waves.
Then again, Moses was said to be a stammerer and look who picked him to be his spokesman. And sometimes the softest, most hesitant voice is the one that draws the most attention. Mason certainly makes the listener lean in closer, the better to catch every detail of the soft static dub in between which his guitar gently weeps. It´s too pretty to be toxic but there are indeed solid particles clogging the organic flow and unbalanced tape revolutions.
Mason´s Jeremiad has an aura similar to William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops but unlike them, these loops show no sign of ever crumbling into nothing. Like the radio waves that make television, this is ambient that is capable of going on forever.
jeremiad is available on Analogpath. [Release page]
