Fans of mellifluous, pulsating ambient electronics, take note. Out in the Pioneer Valley lives a one Andy Tomasello, who for many years has explored various electronic-based avenues under the names Eat Cloud and, more recently, Caustic Rainbow. Since Tomasello abandoned the city life for the relative quietude of western MA, he’s dropped the psuedonymns and refocused on exploring his droner zoned depths. After an extended musical hibernation, Tomasello now re-emerges with his first full length in several years – ‘Elephant In the Room’
The album is a cohesive set of excursions through processed guitar and various electronics (no wonky computer program manipulation here, folks), twisted and effected into exquisite patterns that feature a cold, delicate beauty, like wind blown icicles dripping in the winter sun. Warm, swollen tones rise and fall through glacial melodies, complimented by a collaged cornucopia of stuttering glitches and static chops that articulate the opaque, meditative mood. This juxtaposition between smooth undulating tones and chattering, sparkling sonic flora creates an engaging contrast that somehow simultaneously lulls the listener into gentle reveries and tickles the frontal cortex with its spritely micro-tones.
It all comes off like the swan song of a dying android; powering down with a gentle but firm and inevitable motions, the ghost in the machine resists with stirring glitch groans, fried hardware spasming with final flickers of electric life. Expect much more from this electronic chameleon, who now happily has discovered in the hills of w. MA the time and space to delve further into uncharted charged zones.