Sewer Election & Charmaine Lee - Navigation I Inre Och Yttre Landskap

Gothenburg scene vet Dan Johansson births another Sewer Election record into this diseased world, this time in collaboration with New York's relatively wet around the ears Charmaine Lee (ie her Discogs page isn't four pages long). The two lines of biography that accompany the record tell me this was a mail collaboration recorded pre-pandemic, which you can either view as prescient or mere coincidence. Either way, if you're to call an album Navigation In Inner And Outer Landscapes, you're probably used to time in isolation with not much more than your own maddening muse to guide you. But what a muse it is that these two have chosen to explore. Knowing nothing of Lee's previous work, which i've since read is tied to the world of improv, i wasn't entirely sure what to expect, though there's certainly pleasure in the surprise. Glitchy vocal samples, with an Automatic Writing style concern with texture over message, surround icey electronic drones, indefinable field recordings and the faintest brush of de-tuned acoustic guitars, not especially melodious but not entirely atonal either. Some of what i'd consider the more abrasive tendencies of Sewer Election are reigned in here (it's not insignificant the albums not called Killed For Denmark), replaced by a debased folk aesthetic which feels very much a part of the current FFFM sound. The result is something you could imagine finding place on the Cramps label, ala Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza with a broadband connection. Edition of 250. Probably all gone by the time you get to this sentence...

As ever, one copy per customer, be nice.