I’m not the kind to wear headphones when I ride my bike. It’s dangerous to fall into the rhythm of a song when your safety depends so heavily on adapting to the rhythms of all the cars and stop lights and holes in the road. The layering of these sporadic rhythms is a soundtrack of its own — the crescendo of buildings and streets falling off into gaps of space allowing cropped pieces of noise and conversation room to play between the layers.
“With Out Her Hood” from the mysterious Sleep Fern, sounds like a field recording from the industrial-laden areas of inner southeast Portland, where only half of warehouses are still used for their intended industry purposes and the other half have been filled with artist studios and music venues. Pieces of mundane conversations breathe in and out between the waves of industrial noise and static bouncing between buildings and the soft guitars echoing out from alleyways and loading docks.
Listen to “With Out Her Hood” below, and buy the tape directly from Sleep Fern.
• Sleep Fern: http://sleepfern.blogspot.com
