edition of 300
False Berries is the project of Sterling MacKinnon, a lifelong contributor to all sorts of underground sounds but perhaps best known to WOE followers as one half of Cuneiform Tabs. Find the Gyres is the second LP to makes use of the moniker following a very below-the-radar debut for Slothmate in 2022, and also earns the prestige of being the first release for Monk's Hood, a new imprint (and well maintained blog - check it out) run by MacKinnon with another shop staple, Juho Toivonen. Some of that biography is helpful in leading us to an understanding of what's happening with Find the Gyres, a woozily uncoiled collection of 11 consciously psychedelic and texturally-oriented stoned-lullabies that certainly trace a line back to Cuneiform Tabs in their referencing of West Coast private press spiritual musics and speak to a wider world of experimental activity that both MacKinnon and Toivonen have long situated themselves within. And yes, this is experimental music in presentation, a confluence of processed tape loops, circling guitars and drones, and strung-out vocals, but it's also rooted in a keen understanding of melody and song-structure, as true to Syd Barrett and Eno (I hear a lot of the lunar vista of 'Deep Blue Day' in here) as it is Flaming Tunes and second album period Swell Maps. Fans of that second Cuneiform Tabs album will be immediately enamored, though there's a reason this isn't being released under that name and not just because it's missing the contributions of Matt Blythe. There's an ostensible dream-like strangeness to Find the Gyres that feels generative of its own specific universe, a universe that sees Mackinnon unmoored from his previous home in San Francisco to a new(er) life in London that still carries the aesthetic hallmarks of the former but also appears well-travelled and rabbithole-bound, the product of the digressions of one person in search of their own specific understandings. Psychedelia can often express itself as place-less and lo-fi feel as if it's falling apart (and that's obviously part of the appeal), but there's something being built here from that unknown atrophy that is actually very affecting in its singular qualities. Needless to say, an impressive first shot across the bow.
FFO: Cuneiform Tabs, Syd Barrett, Eno, Swell Maps, Flaming Tunes
