(November 2009) U-Cover’s limited CDr series has yielded a number of unsung gems in a stream of sometimes patchy sometime ho-hum output from deep in the heart of post-ambient Europe. Lest Thomas André pass into a U-cover limbo of unhymned Belgians, Poles and Slovenians, here’s notice of an album of guitar-wrung tonehaze whose coy unassuming nature, once explored, reveals a quiet gem. His Rim may have little previous form – a short-format release on the now defunct Heldernacht (Friends in Astoria), contributions to a couple of obscure Canadian short films, and a single compilation appearance. Yet apparent novice status is belied by the maturity of this his first full-length. Seas & Deserts & Skies hosts nine tracks of slow-lid-close soundscaping moulded with minimal means and momentum to maximal effect. Designed around subtly shifting themes, it’s a kind of suite-within-a-suite of diaphanous drones, its eponymous triptych of elements formed through three subtly distinct sections. So, wherein lies the headswim of Rim?
Long languorous swathes of guitar are spooled out into aquatic, evacuated and celestial expanses in low-attack slow-decay extractions of mid- and high-end tones, led towards the infinite through a series of unfussy effects, notably the holy trinity of reverb-delay-chorus. Not for Rim the chthonic doom-mongering of the bass-ment brethren. Instead he treads a luminous light-carpeted way – of gossamer and gauze. Guitar-drone dealers should look next to the likes of Hakobune and Yui Onodera, at the other end of the shelf from Fear Falls Burning and Wereju, with possible references in similarly solemn spatial works – the likes of Andrew Chalk’s Shadows from the Album Skies or Paul Bradley’s Sketches from Dust. The slender strata of distilled string-melt that is “From the Gold Mines” (picked for the [parvo] art label compilation) is a perfect illustration of Rim’s light touch with processing-and-FX, letting strings sing with their own authentic steel song, while giving voice to other resonances. Expansively pacific, this Rim.
Similar, yet different, is the sound of ambient/post-classical pair, Pausal. Their s/t EP, originally a 3-track web giveaway from Highpoint Lowlife, has now had its downbeat DIY drift given full epic sprawl potential with full mastering by specialist tweaker, Twerk. Pausal is a truly apt name for a sound so drawn to stasis, to the interstitial. It’s a minimalism of a different order to Rim’s, like an orchestra to a chamber quartet; rather than seeking a shrinking violet of sound, they progressively magnify deliberately spare material with such delicacy and insistence that dirge is transformed to hymnal. Its ebb-flow and timelapse kinesis may have registered on standard reference scales labelled by reviewers with SotLßàBasinski and EnoßàNamlook, but to these ears Alex Smalley and Simon Bainton’s Hampshire pastoral is sui generis (though, while we’re at the reference game, here’s a sliver or two of SAWII Aphex, and there’s an air of Jochem Paap’s FAX cult-classic, Vrs-Mbnt-Pcs 9598). So how does Pausal’s garden grow?
On “Song From a Cloth Pocket” a simple cycling cello-like motif flirts with feedback before mounting melodic accretions conspire to create harmonies spiralling around and feeding off the silken spine, dispersing into aether to orchestrate the same cadence of melancholy transcendence as Eno’s “An Ending (Ascent).” “Place (Revisited)” has at its heart a single organ sustain that builds from spindly to sturdy, gradually revealing sub-melodic arteries run through with microtonal motion in a sub-lit nano-symphony. The sound, while remaining delicate, becomes cathedralesque, choral. And finally “Semi Submerged” is an excellent added bonus to the original track trio, an out of focus billowing two-chord loop with a hazy hint of the snowshoe-glaze of Biosphere, rendering Pausal’s foray into the zone between Deep Listening immersion and micro-orchestral drone an unalloyed triumph. Overall Pausal EP‘s digital post-production touches do little to ruffle the presiding nature tone, its sounds organic, breathing, autumnal shades in tune with the crisp rusty leaves of the cover image, and vespertine atmospheres suggesting the last light of the sun bringing with it the sad-happy draughts of the last drops of day’s delight before the inevitability of night.
Seas & Deserts & Skies is out now on U-Cover CDr. Pausal EP is out now on Highpoint Lowlife. [Listen & Purchase the Pausal EP]
