SP-53 Hollowfonts – ‘Primitive Masonry’ CS
Although Primitive Masonry is only Michael J. O’Neal’s second proper release, following the exquisite and haunting XLVIII cassette on Phinery in 2013, the six pieces contained within suggest decades of refined tinkering and honed subtlety. “Hushmoney” opens the set with a hollowed-out dirge littered with sonic static and heaving atmospherics, highlighting the heightened sense of sonic diversity ahead. Pummeling low-ends and paced, scattershot rhythms perpetuate the dimmed scene with true malevolence and spidery presence. It’s a transcendent experience that grey-scale powerhouses like Modern Love strive to achieve. The title track continues the alluringly dreadful narrative with distant and disfigured runs of tribalistic, post-industrial flair. Elsewhere, “Men of the Collapse,” “Red Curling Mist” and “Dominator” throb their misanthropic meanderings with callous seduction and crippling atmospheres, permeating a hopeful ambivalence in otherwise abhorrent aural atrocities. It’s an uplifting rouse after the fall. Limited edition of 100 copies. Comes with free download code.
SP-54 Invisible Path – ‘Hallowed Ground’ CS
For the past decade and from U.S. coast to U.S. coast (initially NYC, now Berkley), Michael Bailey (former member of Barn Owl) has created wholly amorphous sets of cosmically-shaded, eternally elusive ambient music with an improvist’s ear and a genuine curiosity of sound. As Invisible Path, Bailey records celestial suites of long-form, aural meditation, issuing intoxicated washes of meandering sound via Not Not Fun, Jehu & Chinaman, Mineral Tapes, and other denizens of wayward intent. Hallowed Ground, Bailey’s latest under the Invisible Path guise, is arguably the producer’s master work, culling deeply mesmerized and mesmerizing movements using a mix of stringed instruments, amplified metals, various tape machines and modular synthesizer. Balanced across two side-long pieces of equal but disparate expansiveness, the tape finds Bailey effortlessly but boldly surveying far-reaching terrains of meticulously layered sound. Tectonic shifts of all-consuming sound segue in and out of one another in a series of drifting, sonic vignettes. All you can do is yield to the bliss. Limited edition of 100 copies. Comes with free download code.