10"
Beautiful and occasionally unsettling example of pastoral psychogeographic sound from Mari Return, the one-man project (with guest feature from previous newsletter subject Otis Jordan) of CT Brown recorded in a room beside the river Ribble, what we might assume to be the titular 'mote'. If the scenery has worked its way into the music, it's still not an entirely obvious rural affair. In short, it's a little less polite than you might first anticipate. While the delicately arranged layers of plucked and brushed strings, and tape loop fragments are often peaceful and serene, there's something strangely disruptive and disquieting in how they've been processed, as if suggesting some town vs country tension, the faint rumblings of nearby industry bleeding in around the edges. In its way, this is ambient music in its truest sense, the sound AND the feel of the world around via its various binaries, dissonances and interactions. Hugely accomplished for a debut album (though I suspect it might not be its creators first foray into recorded sound...), and a huge tip for anyone who's found intrigue in the haunted/-ing communiques of Malvern Brume, Blue Chemise, and the Gothenburg underground.
FFO: Malvern Brume, Blue Chemise, Juho Toivonen, Treasury of Puppies
