Album Reviews

CHAIRCRusHER

Distelfink

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Iowa City’s very own Chaircrusher (aka Kent Williams, a regular LV contributor) is back. By Chaircrusher’s frantic standards—four albums in 2021, three each in 2020 and 2019—2022 has constituted a hibernation of sorts; an Eastern Gray Squirrel tucked away inside a tree hollow with nothing but an analog synthesizer for company. Yet, like all sleepy mammals, Williams finally rose, treating us to a typically glitchy single, Chini Ya Mawe, in June, followed by this full-length project in July. Distelfink, a slithering slice of ambient-electronica, reminds us that if you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares straight back at you.

Soft, seductive, yet ultimately unsettling, the ribbon of chimes infecting “Palisades” is what I hear in my head whenever a cryptocurrency hawker begins explaining to me how their stablecoin is the future of decentralized exchange. “It’s pegged to what? Uh-huh. Accessible across more blockchains in the future too? Great, great. I’ll get back to you when I next feel like setting my savings on fire.”

Likewise, the menace of “Fomite” is unmistakable, filling me with the same sense of dread I experience when creeping around a dark cave in Pokémon Ruby. A oneway ticket to Mount Doom, it’s an album high. Writers of American Horror Stories, take note.

By contrast, the kickdrum-driven thunder of “Adventitious” (a confident nod to Chaircrusher’s techno with a shuffling, stuttery noise. It’s as experimental as the noisy experimentation of Fennesz, but like “Snowfall” and other tracks, there’s something familiar and harmonically satisfying for the listener to latch onto. (It’s also all too brief. On first listen, I thought it was a one-minute vignette; its 3:09 seems fleeting.)

The liner notes say that the music is inspired by “the nature of Iowa,” but there’s nothing as on the nose as the sounds of cicadas or the wind. These echo the natural world, but are made by Padley and Purdy’s fingers.

They’re both players of assured technical skill, but there are no feats of instrumental skill for their own sake. They use those thousands of hours of practice so they don’t have to think about playing; they’re listening and reacting in real time to each other, in service of the mood they want to create.

The rubato arpeggiation of “Cloud” seems to capture the movement and stillness of clouds in the sky, the show that’s always playing in Iowa if you just look up. Since these are jazz guys, the song has surprising, deceptive cadences piled on top of each other, like a nimbus cloud climbing into the atmosphere. What makes this album special is how much the more conventional tracks like this fit so well with the more electronic, ambient pieces. They use different sonic palettes to express the same ideas differently.

It’s fitting this was recorded at Flat Black Studio, in the middle of farmland, surrounded by trees. Inspiration is all around there, literally. It’s easy to imagine Padley and Purdy taking a break outside from a session, and the sound of the wind in the trees sounds so perfectly in sync with what they’re trying to play that they have to laugh.

The warm, welcoming sound of Ecotones invokes the natural world not by literal imitation, but in the way nature supports and sustains us.

influences) and the shimmering melodies of “Tangram” demonstrate it’s still possible to harbor hope while living through 2022’s smoldering hellscape—even if those dreams are reduced to dusty debris by fossil fuel barons. Indeed, much like vital climate legislation, “Tangram” eventually withers away; only hi-hats are left to keep brooding synths company, as a song that started so optimistically ends on a depressing note of realism.

“Distlefink,” the album’s namesake, hardly raises the mood. A sonic ghost ship, it glides through the ether; the perfect soundtrack to a Safdie brothers film.

“Eliane”’s dissected whispers drift, chatter and evaporate, underpinned by a twinkling array of interchanging vibrations. Always just out of reach, the snatches of vocals feel like faint memories from a previous life, a Philip K. Dick novel unravelling page by page into my ears. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I’m not sure. But they definitely listen to Chaircrusher.

Eventually the scattered voices give way for “Checksum,” the album’s 22 minute closer. Step inside, where ambivalent chaos reigns supreme. Is that a sword being smelt-

ed? A 56k modem shuffling towards an internet connection? Details like that matter little once the fuzziness takes over. Imagine walking around the Johnson County Fair after a tab of acid and you get the picture. Stay away from me, prizewinning sheep! How many minutes left? Four. I can hold on. Think about anything except the void. Anything. Just not: the void. —Glenn Houlihan

JARREt PuRDY & DAN PADLEY

Ecotones

JARRETTPURDYMUSIC.BANDCAMP. COM

When Dan Padley played at the Iowa City Farmer’s Market a few weeks ago, I was impressed (as always) by the liquid elegance of his playing on the jazz standard “All the things you are.” I’m sure there was effort expended, but he played effortlessly, pulling different sounds from his guitar not with pedals or electronic tricks, but with just the touch of his fingers. Ecotones, released in January, combines Padley’s casual virtuosity with the keyboard and synthesizer of Jarrett Purdy. Ecotones takes its cues stylistically from the ambient music pioneered by Brian Eno and others. But songs like “Snowfall” cleave to more conIF YOUR IDEA OF JAZZ IS ventional MIDDLE AgED gUYS NODDINg jazz songwriting SAgELY tO tHE PIANO PLAYER’S and perfortRICKY ELEVENtH CHORDS, mance. tHIS IS SOMEtHINg DIFFERENt. If your idea of jazz is middle aged guys nodding sagely to the piano player’s tricky eleventh chords, this is something different. “Snowfall” is a delicate, sophisticated composition that invites everyone in. It has some of the satisfying, approachable sonorities of folk harmonies with some tonal changes that surprise the ear without being jarring. “Petrichor” is just as warm but contains more electronic sounds, centered on an atonality combined