White Reeves, a partnership between Pittsburgh sound collage artists Ryan Emmett and Micah Pacileo (who also go under the moniker Hunted Creatures) just released a tape entitled OURO BORUS out on Mistake by the Lake Records. The release notes describe the duo’s concept behind their approach to the album as an attempt to “re-use and [recycle] recordings of archived recordings to create original compositions to challenge the idea of both blunt appropriation and the intellectual/creative waste left in the wake of an increasingly rapid search for the ‘new’.” Their method emphasizes the notion of discovery in experimental music, where the end is not in sight at the outset of the creative process. The palette they have chosen involves throbbing bass arpeggios ceaselessly undulating below industrial whirrings, metallic scrapes, and synth squelch. Their lexicon is stark enough to dissociate the listener from the tides of pop styles to open our ears to the mechanical tunes of the everyday. This approach bears two results in the course of the record. One result produces moments of beauty where the squalls of reverb and crust of tape loop illuminate the hum of mundane life in a spiritual light. Other times the tone shifts to something more sinister, reminding us of the soulless drones of the assembly line, the wind through shells of abandoned housing projects, and other anxieties of the techno-capitalist society that we live in. Grip the tape here.
“DSM” showcases the many individual styles of Brockton’s Van Buren Records
It has been a fruitful 18 months for the Brockton super-collective Van Buren Records. Their two 2021 records, Bad For Press and Black Wall…