Idea Fire Company - Bathroom Electronics

A busy time for Horn of Plenty, their second release of the week a first time pairing with underground mainstays, Idea Fire Company. If you've followed the trajectory of either, you might reasonably wonder what took them so long to get their act together, the connection between label and artist feeling both entirely fitting and somewhat inevitable. The Massachusetts-situated duo of Scott Foust and Karla Borecky have been producing outsider sounds and issuing records for over 30 years now (context: their debut came out the same year as Nevermind. Imagine those parallel universes), a continuanlly unfolding exploration of experimental electronics, ambient/noise crossover aesthetics, psychedelic improv and, most importantly, a distinct sense of the alien/other. It's a description you might easily apply to Horn of Plenty, too, albeit across a shorter timeline (and the comparisons with the other record they've released this week, by Eyes of the Amaryllis, bears out that truth). Bathroom Electronics is an aptly labeled presentation, 40 minutes consisting of two long form pieces and two shorter expressions of domestic electronic experimentation recorded in, yep you got it, bathrooms. The why and what for i can only guess at, though of course bathrooms are mostly (no kink shaming) private environs, a phrase that i think encapsulates the MO of IFCO: Private Environmental Music. Foust and Borecky are actually joined here by Matt Krefting and Timothy Shortell, making this a slightly more communal affair than the minimal, lonesome hum of stark electronic composition might suggest, though the sense of rural isolation is unavoidable. Comparable with someone like Ashtray Navigations, these are the kind of sounds that mostly come only from bedrooms, from small towns, and now yes, from bathrooms too, the kind of calling you might pursue when few others are around to hear.