Year in Swill

“Does anyone create a masterpiece anymore? I suppose there is no money in it”

-Scott Foust, the liners for the Island of Taste

Scott Foust, the Rodney Dangerfield of the underground, quietly released two of the year’s best LPs on his Swill Radio imprint in 2008. While a vast number of lesser artists quickly sold out of small, private pressings of their band practices, copies of Idea Fire Company’s The Island of Taste (#1 on my 2k8 list) and Asmus Tietchens’ Telis, Telis (#14) collect dust in Foust’s basement. World’s never been a fair place.

At a purely superficial level, packaging and inserts on The Island of Taste stand out. The sheer workmanship that goes into any IFCO release is unmatched and this record goes beyond the usual superb packaging and a philosophical treatise that the band gives the listener. The inserts featured in The Island of Taste lay the record’s vision on a collection of postcards. Furthering the vision, Karla Borecky’s painting of hearts (hot peppers?) growing on a thin gram cracker that hovers over the ocean sort of sums up the aural sense of the album—the industrial clashing with the natural and spawning the surreal.

Akin the Shadow Ring’s I’m Some Songs— the darker soulmate of The Island of Taste, the album is a lot to digest on the first, second and even third go-round. Borecky, Foust and co. construct an engrossing and multifaceted work of art in which new motifs, sounds and ways of interpreting the album emerge with each listen. It’s an album that halts all movement in of a room and serves as a torch welding the joint between natural and manmade beauty, beauty and dread.

Within the first few songs, a distinct vision emerges—that of the natural versus manmade. The album begins with a possible homage to Salmon Run, as footsteps and flat, conveyer belt synth take push a beautiful opera performance to the background and welcome the listener to a factory of sound. The title track focuses on natural beauty, as a slow, resonating piano and a crackling tape manipulation wind converge overtop bird chirps. The tape sounds wash over the composition like waves, adding a subtle short wave radio static undertone at times but mainly compliments the idyllic scenery. From there, “Like the Old Days” acts as the offspring of the two previous tunes, incorporating the spiral dissonance from “Land Ho” into the beach scenery found on “The Island of Taste.”

On the second side, IFCO focuses on the darker part of the album’s equation. A channel surfing on AM radio pairs with a few low lingering piano notes on “Lost Victories” to create a sense of dread. IFCO charts new territory in “Heroes of the Last Barracade.” The tune features haunting vocals conquering the rain and the rusted swingset funk of the New Blockaders. “Last Man…Last Round…” serves as the album’s death knell, as it marches the listener back into the material world with low piano strikes and a steady power drill drone.

To say that The Island of Taste is merely one of the year’s best records sells it short. I spent a year and a half absorbing The Island of Taste and the record still captures my imagination. I slept while the album played. I listened to it in the background. I listened to it lying down and standing up, overjoyed and depressed, drunk and sober. But I never listened to the album with another living soul in the room, with the exception of my dog. Both “the Heroic Chiseling Phase” and “The Island of Taste,” two of Foust’s written works, urge reader to eliminate distractions and focus on the matter at hand. The Island of Taste successfully clears away those distractions for the listener. IFCO creates a world wherein the listener could take an hour or so and loose himself in its confines. The record is an experience, not just a work of art.

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Understated perfectly describes Asmus Tietchens’ Telis, Telis. Through command and restraint, Tietchens fashions quiet bits of static into an electric cattle fence soundtrack. The grooves of the record exemplify its sparse nature, as the analog signals are visible to the patient observer. These barbed wire-shaped analog signals also mirror the sound. Like an alternation between nicks and scratches on a dusty LP and the repeating grooves at the end of a record, Tietchens’ sonic construction at first sounds intrusive.

On “Teilmenge 20,” which comprises the first side, a blackened oscillating hum sound fills some of the negative space between each static twitch. However, small spirals of synth gradually emerge and poke through the crackling cobwebs. At first, the waves of drone feel light, relaxing and almost psychedelic but they develop into a shallow breath pattern. As the synth continues to flow between the cackles, bubbling computer moans probe the outer regions of the cackling and only to hibernate under the fog,

A high-frequency tone replaces the scratches at the beginning Side B. Somehow colder than the first side, “Teilmenge 44” feels like a trip through a steel sewage drain. The high-pitched pulse and electronic demon steam give the impression of an inanimate object trying to communicate with a living organism. Furthering this vibe, “Ein weiteres Leben geht zu Ende” features computerized breaths and a low-volume drone. The drone also rotates beneath the final song, “Teilmenge 33A.” Crawling data processing bugs serve as the vehicle for the final track, climbing up the drone and infesting the spare synth raindrops.

Telis, Telis requires undivided attention and achieves this through subliminal sonic patterns. The disruptive environment carved out at the forefront of the record’s layered sound serves as a demand for the listener’s focus. Tietchens’ compositions slowly manage to dominate the air in the room. The listener notices when even the slightest underlying drones and synth patterns emerge because Tietchen’s owns the room.

The Rest:

In addition to the two Swill LPs, Foust also wrote his philosophic musings on a series of postcards for Entr’acte. I can’t for the life of me find them around my house. Also, his years in the making feature film Here’s to Love was released on Swill (review forthcoming).

Idea Fire Company contributed both parts of “The Heroic Chiseling Phase” to a split LP with Felix Kubin that came with the second issue of Big Mag. The song harkens back to older IFCO releases. A throbbing synth that sounds like electronic jug band guitar swirls in discarded water fountain streams in both parts of the tune, carving out the hypnotic trajectory exemplified on Anti-Natural. It’s IFCO’s sound stripped of all ersatz but still effective.

Those jonsing for unadulterated synth drones straight out of a ‘70s sci-fi flick should check out Idea Fire Company “Postcard” 7” (Entr’atce). “Sunsports” feels like the first encounter with the half-man, half robot in a darkened drainage pipe.

Also a long overdue reissue of XX Committee’s “Network,” which will be prominently featured in a wrap up of the best reissues of 2008.

To Come:

Just what the hell is a trd/wd anyway? A look at Maine’s finest mindfuck

Year in Country Teasers

Albums I dug in 2008