Departure Street :: This Broken World (Shady Ridge)

Forged from steel-string electric guitar alone, This Broken World is a dark alt-ambient meditation where looping drones, restless fingers, and decaying tape-like repetitions favor texture over melody, tracing desperation, endurance, and the fragile possibility of repair as sound slowly resists entropy.

Steel strings against entropy

Dark instrumental multitrack solo guitar, with lots of drone harmonics and restless fingers, no vocals or field sounds, always steel strings, a mortal contemplation of texture over melody. This Broken World offers seven alt-ambient, dark lo-fi psychedelic solo electric guitar tracks that are haunting and atmospheric, other worldly dreamy hypnotic tape loop effect things repeat into infinity diminishing, marked by reverb heavy loops, guitar textures in layers making a blanket you can examine closely or just float about looking everywhere, guitar sounds creating a way to describe the world, sprinkled with unresolved tempos and signatures that create a special mood, the patterns are challenged but endures and persists. There is an emotional sense of desperation in the music, which concludes with a final track suggestive of the prospect that a broken world is not impossible to repair. Overcoming entropy one more time, real soon.

This Broken World is the 22nd full-length solo album by Allan J Kimmel (aka Departure Street), and the fifth on the Shady Ridge Records label. The album is a continuation of the musical journey that is implicit in the pseudonym, Departure Street. The track titles are quite dark. Departure refers to anxiety, uncertainty, and pessimism, also a starting point from which one embarks on a new journey of hope, discovery, and growth.

“Suicide With A Slow Motion Bullet” (5:31) opens This Broken World, with a moderate velocity, a spiraling whirlpool of repeating fragments, curvy tones and scraping strings, the harmonics pile up building curiosity, with reverb slides rainbow sparkles, regenerative loops layering creeping fingers on guitar strings. “Falling Through The Light” (7:48) brings back finger picking strings in the layers, squeaking and squealing, fingers pulling fragments and bits nibbling and searching, continuing the fingers fidget and pattern walking, I am in a trance falling hard but keeping calm, enjoying the guitar flickering layers of ringing metal sparkling trembling vibrating. The third track has a curious dark title, “To Erase The Life In Between” (6:24) standing at the top of the abyss, moments are more melodic mostly mulling mixtures and textures, always weaving fingers picking strings in new combinations flowing together, taking a turn then falling back.

Dark guitar loops endure ::

“Burn A Whole Life Long” (9:24) starts strumming, finding a way for the layers to merge, a new itchy melody almost pushing through, never stopping restless, sometimes the same few notes, variations on the textures over and over slow and quickly some odd escapes, a drone then an experiment with single piercings, finding a path through the passing thoughts heading into an odd breakthrough, circles that never close entirely or crash moments that might not be accidents, fade into the cold. “Before The World Fell Apart” (5:14) continues with short strums rather than twitching digits, imagine picking your way through the rubble after the changes happened, searching and experimenting, trying again using the same tuning mood and range. The title track, “This Broken World” (7:49) combines strums and reverse tape effects, starting over again and again, now something is emerging and growing, trying to mesh and come together in a flow but for now layers are building up into a dark lamentation. “A Last Moment Of Silence” (7:51) closes as a eulogy of finger picking melodies that cluster and bump against each other, layers increase and reverb and delay makes me feel calm and less sad, fingers on strings searching and repeating finding the flower, a desert pool in the dark.

This Broken World is available on Shady Ridge. [Bandcamp]