Clearings seems to describe a trajectory in its passage from organic to more ethereal sounds; a dynamic of slow aperture, a catharsis involving nature’s mediation—these ‘clearings’ seeming polysemic.
Over the last decade Delaware ambient axe-scapeist Ben Fleury-Steiner has quietly accumulated an impressive back catalogue spread across Infraction, Low Point, Mystery Sea, and Hypnos, not to mention his now-dormant Gears of Sand. Clearings is his first for UK’s Rural Colours, Audio Gourmet Harry Towell playing host here, facilitating Ben in “letting go of his ‘anal retentiveness’ in the studio,” reference, perhaps, to creative unblocking—clearings denoting some oblique strategies re-routing from well-beaten tracks to paths less trodden. It seems to describe a trajectory in its passage from organic to more ethereal sounds; a dynamic of slow aperture, a catharsis involving nature’s mediation—these ‘clearings’ seeming polysemic.
Electric kalimbas, modular synth, guitar + FX are deployed in three pieces that sound homogeneous, though with a deal of differentiated detail within – all smudged, wrapped up in crackle packets, and tied with hissy string. “Wind Up Bird’s Lament” spools out a shifting drift of acoustic instrumentation and treated drone mulch resounding over a deep drone base. Perturbations—twitters, remote croaks and sluicings; a vague sense of becoming unmoored, an undercurrent of reined in power. Centrepiece “Glade” draws from a captured public space bringing a certain edge and air of abstraction to a buzzing cavernous backdrop. Emerging from this enviro-fog, it builds in swell-relent recursion to a vortex, decaying to low-light hum. The waves of the final “Parallax” are more stretched with faint metallic infusions and an echoing delight of vaporous synth-tone symphonics. Slow’n’low cadences on a doleful Deathprod or sombre SotL tip are secreted deep in a swollen Roach-ean soundworld, congealing into sombre ceremonials melting into fizzing doom-tinged portent spiked with shoegaze haze, rattle and thrum.
Though Clearings will not strike as unfamiliar in its choreography of drone drift and aether smear, chthonic rumble and celestial twinkle, in a domain clogged with light’n’fluff-by-numbers, Ben Fleury-Steiner’s work is distinguished by a teeming inner life. Deep Listening ears be advised: peel to reveal.
Clearings is available from Rural Colours [Release page]
