Reviews

Field Lines Cartographer :: Phases of This and Other Moons (Castles in Space)

Written by Alan Lockett on

More in Reviews:

Otherworldly yet strangely familiar, sometimes sounding oddly more organic than electronic, at once beauteous and mysterious, huge and delicate.

A musical ethnographer of strange beautiful worlds

Mark Burford sets the controls for the heart of the moon as he embarks on a fresh Field Lines Cartographer foray. Phases of This and Other Moons is distinguished by being premised on a single Buchla 208C Easel Command synth, making a virtue of it, focusing on the sonic essence of the instrument processed through various FX—a methodology and means that make for a more minimalist approach focused squarely on tone color and atmosphere.

Something in the way it moves, the sui generis rawness of its timbres, attracts Buford to Buchla like no other, inducing mooning, not so much head over heels as over the moon—of our solar system, to be precise: otherworldly yet strangely familiar, sometimes sounding oddly more organic than electronic, at once beauteous and mysterious, huge and delicate. Working intensely over a period of weeks, FLC’s most frequent mental projection became the surface of one of Jupiter’s moons, or watching a satellite of Uranus transit across its host planet. A space ode, a sonata of swell and relent, shapes and shades through dim-lit regions ensued, becoming a focal concept, reflected in its overall semiosis (look’n’feel, track titles, artwork).

Ultimately, Buford’s growing status as a musical ethnographer of strange beautiful worlds is further cemented by Phases of This and Other Moons, a 2023 space odyssey likely to lure in adepts of early Tangerine Dream and Steve Roach to later synth-aesthetes, Pye Corner Audio and Polypores.

Phases of This and Other Moons is available on Castles in Space. [Bandcamp]

 
ecu-1-logo-pub-igloo-magazine

Related posts ::

Field Lines Cartographer :: This Vibrating Earth (Castles in Space) Field Lines Cartographer :: Dreamtides (Castles In Space) Field Lines Cartographer :: Tone Maps (Quiet Details) Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan :: Districts, Roads, Open Space (Castles In Space) James Adrian Brown :: There Is Space Under Your Seat (Castles In Space)

I do reviews and commentary mainly on ambient/drone, but also operate within a beat-driven triangle whose coordinates are the more adventurous ends of techno, post-dub, and IDM. To illustrate, this week the Loco stereo has flowed with sounds from Steve Roach through Stephan Mathieu to Kangding Ray—a spectrum of space-ambience pulse'n'atmo. I can mainly be read on igloomag.com these days, though you might've come across occasional insertions on the Lend Me Your Ears blog, and I was a contrib to the now defunct e/i mag and Furthernoise. Beyond listening and reviewing, I engage otherwise with music, with outcomes in the form of self-assembled mix creations and audio-doodle under the moniker albient (via Soundcloud and Mixcloud). Based in Bristol, epicentre of 90s’ Trip-hop and ’00s Dub-step in the Wild West of England, I guess a person’s day job might be considered salient to who they are, so let it be known I earn a crust in language/literature and education, though, tbh, you’ll find more of me in the former than the latter.