The catalog of Kevin Greenspon’s Bridgetown Records continues to unfurl in new directions, encompassing a nationwide circuit of experimental underdogs and prolific DIY tape heads. While the label’s overarching aesthetic highlights the abstracted textures and compressed song structures of shoegazing guitar music and miniature ambient composition, the occasional slab of skull-rending electronic maximalism squeezes out of Greenspon’s home dubbing rig and lands right in your little grimy mitts.
As Dugout Canoe, Jacob Isaacs pours out a bubbling torrent of tones from his guitars, synths, and drum machines. The two side-long tracks that constitute his Brass Ring / Merx cassette combine the long form compositional tactics and live collage sensibilities of academic electronic music with a manic improvised energy, reaching ecstatic heights of sensory overload in the vein of the extended guitar sessions of Hubble or Alan Licht. As a chord progression slowly creeps out from the back of the mix, “Brass Ring” escalates from a randomized patch of synth pops into a clattering matrix of rhythmic noise formants. After each segment of the piece reaches a suitable peak, Isaacs detonates the structure and starts from zero again, speeding through discrete vignettes of guitar manipulation on the way to a battering major key climax. “Merx” airs out a web of 8-bit arpeggios and hard-panned percussive bursts as it sketches out an evolving melodic pattern in warp-speed. The track swells into a languid expanse of fine-grain drone voices, consuming any semblance of melody or structure in favor of a heavy drift down through layers of electronic mist.
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You can order Brass Ring / Merx — part of the label’s five tape spring batch — from Bridgetown Records today.
• Dugout Canoe: https://www.facebook.com/trueminnows
• Bridgetown Records: http://www.bridgetownrecords.info