Apple Tree Brightness burns like sunrise personified as the latest release from datewithdeath (aka Travis D. Johnson), landing fresh on the ever-refined Poverty Electronics, a label that has quietly shaped its own groundbreaking corner of experimental electronics for well over a decade
Like sunrise personified
Apple Tree Brightness burns like sunrise personified as the latest release from datewithdeath (aka Travis D. Johnson), landing fresh on the ever-refined Poverty Electronics, a label that has quietly shaped its own groundbreaking corner of experimental electronics for well over a decade. Beautifully assembled across six pieces, the release opens with “Hir buttokez bay and brode,” a fourteen-minute drift through lilting fluid motion, gently plucked metallic repetition, and a softly looping detail that radiates warmth without ever losing its sense of mystery. Found sounds flicker constantly through the tender mix, giving the piece an almost tactile physicality.
Track two, “(aar),” pivots sharply into fractured breaks and tangled sound sculpture, balancing distorted pressure against moments of apparently surprising tenderness within its compact two-minute runtime. There’s a raw physical charge to it, as though primordial rhythm systems are colliding with some half-corrupted archaic architecture. “tilde” follows as a slow-moving procession of clicks, chimes, and hovering drone. Its low mechanical hum recalls domestic ambience at its most strangely comforting, turning everyday sonic residue into something hypnotic and absorbing. “tttg-dyumed fS” captures the imagined strange excitement of early home-computing culture circa Sinclair ZX81 cassette loading aesthetics, moving with uncanny precision, all flickering resilient suspense and digitized anticipation, channeled through brittle electro-acoustic abstraction.
By the time “XC” arrives, the release has fully surrendered to rhythmic elasticity: strobing pulses, clipped repetitions, and drifted proto-cellular pacing unfolding with installation-like intensity. Closing piece “(aee)” begins from a grounded resting tone before gradually unfolding into a landscape of industrial resonance and manipulated object sound, ending the album with a traversing and centered feeling of quiet swaying motion rather than mere resolution of a musical.
Apple Tree Brightness is available on Poverty Electronics. [Bandcamp]
