DROPDEAD / SILENT LAND TIME MACHINE
From Ashes Comes The Day
(Holodeck - HD020) LP $16.00 (Out-of-stock)
This collaboration by Montréal’s Eric Craven (drummer for Hangedup and HRSTA) and Austin’s Jonathan Slade interweaves vignettes that swell and decay into and out of one another. This brooding and lucid work is in a constant cycle of ruin and regeneration, where fragmented wreckage degenerates into the fertile breeding ground for the genesis of the next. Movements of rhythmic guitar sweep in and fade out, propelling the album through a series of pensive destinations, while damaged viola phrases frantically build and collapse alongside increasingly distraught vocal howls. At times the strings rise to a panic, forming invasive waves of tension that eventually disintegrate into sparse minimal soundscapes consisting of dense columns of guitar feedback and clearings of near silence. There is no percussion on From Ashes Comes the Day, but Craven’s atypical drum-style translates directly into texture and improvisational structure (for which his ear is suberb), while Slade’s melodic articulation surfaces unbalanced and unhinged. Hand-silkscreened fold-over sleeve by Nick Kuepfer. Edition of 300.