Gulls against a white sky:
Not seagulls. Landlocked. Tilt the camera down and see the sea beneath. Bird cries saturated the New Age. Untamed. The natural order of beasts. Wingbeats and cawing. These still comfort me. Faced with the waste, I am at ease. Wings spread and achieve stasis. Wings contract and the gulls advance.
Gulls glimpsed from a fortress of garbage:
Multi-instrumentalist and Patient Sounds label-head M. Sage released a 2xLP of spellbinding ambient composition called A Singular Continent. Sage sits at the center of his practice, pushing his rig of guitar, electronics, and samples into ascending passages of high fidelity drift. In “Gulls Over Landfill Caldera” his live input sifts through effects and digital processes, spreading into swathes of sustain and tracing oblique harmonies across an oval orbit of legible root tones. Overdubbed passages of violin, cello, synth, and saxophone emerge from the edge of the haze to provoke the session into deeper meditation. Like drone maverick (and Patient Sounds signee) Derek Rogers’ triumphant Saturations LP, Sage’s multi-tiered recordings fuse the glacial sonic trajectory of the ambient underground with a neo-classical palette of acoustic textures, calling Laughingstock and the roster of Constellation Records to mind alongside the sublime whispers of contemporaries like Hakobune or Celer.
Gulls with a home to reach again:
You can order A Singular Continent now, and stream the whole album at M. Sage’s Bandcamp.
• Patient Sounds: http://www.patient-sounds.com