Various - Early Experiments in Recording, Vol.1 (1976-2021)

Has a compilation ever been more directed to our interests? Hood Faire's partnering with Otis Jordan in compiling this 21 song collection of home recorded experiments speaks to a very particular desire for the rudimentary, the instinctive, and the unformed. Process is such a key concern in music discourse, the listener often keen to get the other side of the desk to see how the magic is made, but it's so frequently wrapped up in notions of 'genius' and virtuosity. Experiencing an artist - and their art - in its nascent stage elicits a different kind of feeling, the sense of a shared intimacy where the notion of 'perfection' is understood as the lie it is. Many of these songs are said to have been recorded while the artists were teenagers, which doesn't so much as render the music inferior as simply yet to be learned - there's no type to play when you're only just working out how to walk. Fittingly, the recordings themselves, which would have been mostly primitive in the first instance anyway, have since become subject to the passing of time, their breaking down suggesting a little of what Walter Benjamin might have called "lost aura" - in their decay you can hear traces of their true form. And so to the music itself? Electronic experiments, lilting lullabies, drone miniatures, blues-y digressions, downtempo laments, near all erring to the side of the morose/introverted. What's most interesting is that despite the 45 year timespan, there's a universality being channeled here, as if creating in this manner gets towards some truth of the human condition. This isn't just music. Here's your window into the heart of it all.