Mountains – Air Museum

We take our word “photography” from the Greek graphos and photos, i.e. “painting” and “light.” If photography is painting with light, Mountains’ forthcoming Air Museums is likely the most photographic album we will hear in 2011.

Mountains are Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp, co-founders of Apestaartje Records. Each maintains a solo catalog, recording as Anderegg and Aero respectively. The musician-mogul template seems to be getting a fair amount of use lately, but this eclectic pairing precludes any clichés: Holtkamp favors Brian Eno and musique concrète, and claims not to be “a trained musician of any sort.” He describes Anderegg as “more the proper musician,” who, prior to attending the Art Institute of Chicago, played acoustic guitar and listened to folk music.

Does the push-and-pull of these divergent tendencies – music for nightclubs and music for campfires – show through in the finished product? Absolutely. Their technique is prodigious: electric guitar, cello, harmonium, harmonica, accordion, piano, and Anderegg’s acoustic six-string all line up as pre-production sources. Tireless refurbishing, stretching, compressing, mixing, and adding the myriad of effects renders the sources unidentifiable … except for the acoustic guitar. Take some of the tracks from their acclaimed 2009 Choral, say, “Map Table,” to name one. The delicate drone-and-guitar sheen verges toward the cosmic brittleness of New Age music, at times uncomfortably so.

By this measure, Air Museum is a significant departure for Mountains. The one-sheet confirms it, describing a fairly significant course correction: “the album manifests itself sonically as their most ‘electronic’ record yet. Air Museum is also their first record that was made in a studio. Working in the studio expanded their possibilities, giving more room for experimentation.” The experiments have paid off.

The tinkering begins with “January 17.” A succulent organ effect gradually fades in, then the tasty, down-yonder machine oscillations do, and at 90-seconds in the central theme of the opening track is introduced: a full-bodied ambient composition with a thick drone undercoat, virtual orchestration, a whipping and cyclical synth effect, and the sound of captains-log encryption. (For a project named Mountains, there is much more space than there is acreage.) There are no drumsticks, except possibly in the chicken dinners. There are no voices, save maybe for those stretched and textured beyond recognition. The acoustic guitar takes the day off, returning only for a beautiful, final-minute encore during “Live at the Triple Door.”

Put your money on the second cut, “Thousand Square,” which continues the infinity-and-beyond motif, with a pulsing, space-beacon backbone and strobe light casing. The original sources may be “cello, accordion, piano, bass etc.,” but you’ll never divine which medium is positioned behind what message, and it really doesn’t matter, either. The output is warm and luminous, regardless of how many circuits through which the signal had to pass. Indeed, paradoxically, electronic music’s natural tendency toward coldness seems completely reversed here. Digitally. One lasting impression is, strangely enough, that of a late 70s tribute.

What will likely come off as the most conventional track is “Backwards Crossover.” Here is a naggingly homesick piece that re-enters the atmosphere with a lightweight clean-tone interplay (both forward and reversed), found sounds nearly clipped down to their 0s and 1s, laser tag exchanges, and sundry other, tiny sound manipulations. Anderegg and Holtkamp may make all of this seem effortless, but something says that Air Museum is the result of endless crafting and re-crafting, vision and revision. This is not an album of beats and hooks, but of studies in texture.

Air Museum is now available through Stashed Goods

- Review by Fred Nolan for Fluid Radio

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