I have a special crystal I keep in my pocket. I bought it from a store in Asheville, a town which is kind of like Nashville, in so far as it’s very “white”, clean, and aesthetically committed to its chosen tourist demographic, which in Asheville’s case happens to be hippy-ish college students that like craft beer, “sweet leaf”, hiking for an hour or two, and buying crystals with, like, healing powers. When I drove into Asheville a dense fog had rolled in, presumably off of a movie set, and visibility was reduced to a single white stripe ahead of me on the road. When I left Asheville—a purple, milky crystal in my pocket, endowed with the power of convenient foresight, intense charisma, and lavender-scented cuticles—the fog was gone. The full burning brilliance of fall in the Smoky Mountains replaced the foreboding, eerie gray. It was like the crystal had absorbed all of the bad vibes. Since then, I can’t remember the pair of pants I left it in.
I’ll never forget that trip.
I have another “crystal” that I keep on my bedside table. It’s a large, trapezoidal prism, and if I’m feeling stressed, I might cue up some of Brandon Locher’s methodical, nimble electronica, and let it cast a rainbow on against the wall. It’s nice to know Locher’s got some prisms of his own. Or, at least, he does in this video for “Air Notes”. These prisms have much more of a chaotic tendency than I’m used to.
The marriage of new age minimalism and cheeky, adventurous fun is essential to Locher’s music, which has been studiously documented by TMT scholars. You see, Locher produces a lot of music and art. He catalogues much of these releases on the blog My Idea of Fun, and also sells prints of some of his work on Ghostly International. The Mazes series in particular reminds me a lot of “Air Notes”, with its delicate hand, and intimate, dense details. The song starts with a rigid arpeggio. In Locher’s playful, melodic style, a whole orchestra of worldly sounds emerge. “Air Notes” is off the appropriately titled EP1, Locher’s first release under his own name. It will be out digitally on Hush Hush February 8th, and you can pre-order the artifact here.
More about: Brandon Locher
