TIP OF THE TONGUE 17 JULY 2011
Borden, Ferraro, Godin, Halo & Lopatin
Frkwys 7
RVNG #7
LP
OUT OF STOCK!
Stunning dream-team summit from a buncha heavy-hitting synth/drone heads – James Ferraro, Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never, Laurel Halo, Samuel Godin and David Borden. Borden is best known for his soundtrack work on The Exorcist as well as his membership of Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company, a new music ensemble that formed in NY in 1969 in order to perform works by Terry Riley, Steve Rich, John Cage etc but that soon developed into one of the first live synth ensembles. Frkyws 7, part of RVNG’s on-going collaborative series, presents five tracks live-channelled by variations of the line-up and it is a goddamn stone: if you can imagine the ultra-sensual slow-mo body sweeps of OPN’s Returnal extended to the point where the biological is confused with the cosmological and the cosmological with the synthetic then you’re approaching the kind of epic, hallucinatory sensuality that the group generate using washes of deep/endless tone and barely stated arcs of synthesized melody. In many ways this might be the most straighforwardly beautiful set of recordings from any of the players, with all of the revelatory power of the 2001 soundtrack re-set for a post Halve Maen/Atem mindset. Indeed, it sits nicely alongside Ferraro’s own Heaven’s Gate as a kind of hi-fi companion to that set’s vision of delivery into the future, with the closing track “Twilight Pacific” as beautiful as anything on his masterpiece Marble Surf. Easily one of the synth/drone records of the year with a majestic vision of the form that would devour and dwarf anything that comes close. Cool paste-on sleeves, comes with a download coupon that also includes a bonus track. CD version imminent. Highly recommended!
