Oscillations
Electronic music is so ubiquitous that it’s easy to forget that it was an obscure art for many decades, right up to the ‘70s. Then, a barely controlled explosion started, with synthesized sounds showing up everywhere. New genres and subcultures formed. E-music tools, once the size of pickup trucks but far more expensive, got smaller and cheaper, and now nearly everyone has them.
Has all that quantity meant more quality? Not necessarily. But there are occasional gems in the vast lava field…
And that’s what we have this month at Right Brain Records: three new releases that capture essential subtleties of different dimensions of electronic music. While they all utilize processed sounds, their results offer stark contrasts. (Click the three album covers below to hear the sounds.)
I’ll start with Wet Sparks, the second album from the experimental duo Electro Manifesto.
Veterans of the Greater Denver experimental music community, Michael O’Neill (guitar, effects) and Gordon Kennedy (percussion, effects) crafted a follow up 2021’s adventurous Invisible Logic. Wet Sparks, is a deep-dive into darker experimental textures, with guitar and percussion generating atmosphere with arrays of creatively deployed effects. Through all of it, Electro Manifesto maintains a playful approach more typical of improvised music than electronic scenes. These six pieces capture moments in time and a special musical connection between long-term collaborators.
Our second featured new release is part blast from the past. It’s the third album from ToE, a project of Sean Wood from the UK. Called, 534N 2.1, this collection is based on reworked studio creations from the 1990s. Sean was active in the budding UK electronica scene at the time, and recently uncovered seemingly ancient audio files from boxes in his attic. The record’s seven pieces are hypnotic meditations that weave together synth, processed guitar and voice-as-instrument. Some of these tracks sound edgy now. Others echo emerging vibes of the 90s, with a new perspective.
And our third new entry is another fascinating collection by the fascinating duo, Bugs In The Basement. As its title suggests, Vol. 3 is the third installment of a Bugs trilogy on Right Brain Records. Germán Pina and Justin Pollak are multi-instrumentalists who’ve been engaged in an ongoing free improv project; Each week for the past 7+ years they’ve spontaneously generated original pieces between 60-90 minutes in length, and published them via their website and podcast. It’s a vast repertoire, and each session has its own character. Like their first two RBR albums, Vol. 3 composed of selected highlights from recent years’ sessions, weaved into a set. Bugs in the Basement is never constrained by labels, and even “electronic music” doesn’t fully apply. (For those who insist, you may hear ambient, psychedelia and a range of other things.) They use a vast array of electronic and acoustic instruments in their unscripted arrangements.
Perhaps because they’re focused on creation, to the exclusion of whatever may be happening in pop culture, Bugs In The Basement’s use of synths has a fresh unself-consciousness to it that feels detached from the very self-conscious history of e-music.
Together, these three releases show the range and ever-present potential of electronic music. The evolution clearly continues.
To learn more about these and future releases, visit Right Brain Records and subscribe.