The implied kinship of Ontario's Hamilton Tapes label and Discreet Music has long felt an obvious itch left mostly unscratched, both imprints seemingly in possession of a shared (and rare) enthusiasm for a particular kind of fractured and subterranean tape decayed sound. In which case, the release of HT label boss Nate Ivanco's Live At Somewhere under the Shadow Pattern name stands as an idealised example of cultural union that traces a thread in spite of geography, the World Underground in perfect symbiosis. This isn't the first Shadow Pattern recording to appear on a label outside of Canada, nor even the first to make a connection with the Gothenburg underground - remembering, of course, 2024's collaboration with Blod - though it is the maiden solo outing for Ivanco's project on vinyl, and with it carries a specific sense of singular thought and, in its way, defiance. Built from home studio recordings of both live improvisations and material prepared for live performance, there's an abstract logic at play here that at first presents itself as abrasive, then over time mutates into something both visceral and intimate. This is a different Shadow Pattern to that heard amongst the ambient-guitar derives of Midnite Blues (the aforementioned LP with Blod) and decayed drone of the double CD collection Chimerism, replaced with a freeform sense of musique concrète informed sound manipulation that, in its first half, passes the likes of David Tudor and Alvin Curran through the lens of the early 00s CD-r underground and on the opposite side transmutes Jandek styled isolationism and Kye Records belligerence through a ghostly piano and ferric collapse. Genuine music from the margins, alien, mysterious and, at times, hard to parse, and yet carrying with it a sense of self that's nothing but invigorating and, in its way, conciliatory of the fringe underground.
FFO: Kye Records, Graham Lambkin, Hanson Records, Juho Toivonen, David Tudor
