I don’t care if your geographical position doesn’t allow for a clear view of the nearest mountain range; hit up your friend with the super-ultra-high-powered telescope, or better yet, steal one in an elaborate display of cunning and acrobatics, and point it to the peak of your choice! Resist the allure of the stars and… holy shit, is that a fucking cougar going to town on that missing family reported on the local news relentlessly for the past week? No. Focus. A void of relatively flat landscape has somehow interrupted the symmetry of the formerly uniform Earth protrusion. Half the mountain is gone. Half of all mountains are gone. Christ, Koen, outdoorsy types everywhere would do well with some forewarning the next time you want to bugger off and attend to your solo work.
Koen Holtkamp, otherwise member of Mountains alongside Brendon Anderegg, will be releasing a new LP, Motion, on March 25 courtesy of Thrill Jockey. An option to extend that particular release comes with the CD version, which contains Connected Works, a compilation of Holtkamp’s previous vinyl-only releases Liquid Light Forms (2013), Gravity/Bees (2010), and Make Haste (2008). That would make the non-limited Field Rituals (2008) the likely point of familiarity, and speaking for myself, I have yet to get a complete handle on that one. Ambient tropes of sampled public transit and children playing mingle curiously with a genuine mix of acoustic (or acoustic-sounding) and digital sources. Motion apparently saw little straying from method, but there was a bit more composition directly in the studio this time around, making for a particularly intense listen on the home stereo.
Motion tracklisting:
01. Between Visible Things
02. Vert
03. Crotales
04. Endlessness
Connected Works tracklisting:
01. Battenkill
02. Hoosick
03. Hudson Static (Live at Shea Stadium)
04. In The Absence of Gravity Please Note the Position of the Sun
05. Loosely Based on Bees
06. Make Haste
07. Free Birds
• Koen Holtkamp: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Koen-Holtkamp/142996465783687
• Thrill Jockey: http://www.thrilljockey.com
More about: Koen Holtkamp
