PRE-ORDER - OUT 10TH JULY: edition of 300
Over the years Sterling MacKinnon has quietly carved out an essential role for himself. As half of Cuneiform Tabs (W.25/Superior Viaduct, World of Echo), an original member of Violent Change (Slothmate), and the sole driver behind False Berries (Slothmate), he has functioned as a facilitator of momentum - a kind of midfield presence. You know, the number 8; vision, restraint, distribution. The one who sees the play before it fully forms and moves it along accordingly. There’s a certain amount of humility to that position, but also a limitation. Because every so often the same sensibility that organises begins to demand its own centre, and the game shifts. Find the Gyres is that shift made audible. Through the tape loops, collage, and songcraft, this is an album composed of processually re-shaping material where phrases repeat slightly off-axis and fragments resembling familiar tunes and melodies evolve into colorist visions echoing the cosmic. Like a swirling vortex, it’s an album which consistently negotiates and plays with the orientation of the listener. Manipulating feelings of immediacy and distance in alternating patterns, all while consistently orbiting a centre of ecstatic melody. The results occasionally echo the crooked homespun clarity of figures like Syd Barrett, Martin Newall, or Flaming Tunes, though Find the Gyres cannot be reduced to points of reference and genre signifiers. If anything, such parallels only highlight how singular the surrounding architecture actually is. As the first Monk’s Hood release, Find the Gyres feels like a condition being set. A way of approaching sound where construction and erosion are not opposites, but part of the same movements and systems. As such, it feels less like a beginning and more like a component within a much larger device that is always already revolving.
