(04.13.05) Hammock, the duo of Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson, are fighting to
bring our attention to ambient music. Citing a trend wherein
“ambient” music has become a style of music no longer relegated to
aural wallpaper, their debut release, Kenotic, is a slow motion
swirl of idyllic charm and texture. Ambient in the sense that it
wears its antecedents in plain sight, Kenotic is influenced by
the melancholic despair that pervades the empty spaces of the rural
South of the United States. The record is filled with endless guitar
delay, long echoes of sound that communicate the vast horizon and
indeterminate distance between settlements.
Heavily reminiscent of Slowdive (more Pygmalion than
Souvlaki), Kenotic weaves together layers of guitar
texture and intersperses the languid movement of melody with the
wordless voice of Christine Glass Byrd and the cello work of Matt
Slocum (“Blankets of Night” and “Overcast/Sorrow”). Songs like
“Winter Light” and “Dawn Begins to Creep” capture the visual
landscapes of their titles as aural snapshots with overlapping
envelopes of soothing sound. “Wish” is the most active song on the
record, actually containing percussion and heavily processed vocals
that inject the listening experience with a tiny charge.
“We were cleansing ourselves from all the noise of the industry,” Byrd
says about the recording of Kenotic. As a balm for all noise,
Kenotic certainly wants to be your panacea. Persistent in its
lachrymose textures, Kenotic wants to be aggressive ambient
music — ambience that demands your attention — but, in the end, it
works best as ambience in keeping with Brian Eno’s original
definition.
Kenotic is out now on Hammock Music.
