A Guide To Saints

“In a white-hot blue rush, the sun came breaking in with enough strength to push you over backwards. Smoke was still lingering on the ceilings, being sucked out once the windows opened up. She leaned out the window, looking down into the empty streets. Nobody. It’s a more peaceful life, now. Everyone’s at the beach, no more working. They gave that up years ago. He came into the room, and laid down on the sofa.

Minutes later, night was coming, and the car warmed up, as they went out along the boule- vards, and into the mountains, for the foggy climb to the top. The keyboards on the tape ste- reo sizzled in the crisp night air, and below, from the lookout point, all the lights were off and quiet. Let’s sit here and see the moon rise.” – Harmony State

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Harmony State is the debut release by Rangefinder, aka Will Long. The project was started as a return to the technology of the 1970’s and 1980’s, using only Yamaha synthesizers, Roland sequencers, and multitrack tape mixing. With the current availability and countless options through computers, it can be overwhelming, and can destroy the immediacy of creativity and spontaneity through becoming too involved with processes and possibilities.

Harmony State came from experimenting with simple capabilities and ideas, and through this, finding a way to have fun and enjoy making music.

“Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.” – H. P. Lovecraft

Occasionally when we dream, we hear. These sounds can take many forms – from the familiar chimes of our everyday to more alien non representative audio apparitions – like music.

It’s from this place that Sleeper calls.

In the land of the long white cloud, Aotearoa, we found C.J Parahi aka Sleeper. As the co- founder and curator of Cooper Cult records, he has been responsible a string of curious re- leases that burrow deep into the antipodean core of his homeland New Zealand.

As Sleeper though, C.J. opens a new window – one that stretches out from conscious horizons and continues into the uneasy realms of the subconscious.

Sleeper is a distant dream, a haze of woven fog that rolls in an undulating hypnotic loop.

His first offering, From Beyond, is a collection of pitched down and heavily processed field re- cordings, samples and found sounds which work to create a wide musical spectrum encom- passing drone, ambient atmospheres and vague outsider pop.

The pieces each borrow in equal doses from William S. Burroughs cut up experiments, H. P. Lovecraft’s Mythos and William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops.

“When I was visiting with a friend in Portland last year, she played me a cassette called ‘Lived In’. At one point it sounded like the ocean was literally pouring out of the stereo. I was in awe of the density of this music – so utterly thick, yet still spatial and open sounding. I was hooked. I made it my mission to find a copy of Lived In for myself before I left Portland – thankfully, Ce- lestino was kind enough to drop one over to me. It still appears regularly in the listening rota- tion here at Room40 HQ.” – Lawrence English

Celestino is the project of Portland based musician Gabriel Celestino Higgins. This latest offer- ing, Kindling, expands the sound world he created so well on Lived In; his 2012 release.

On Kindling, submerged drones gently slide and rub together, one betraying the next in a cascade of truly glacial beauty. Voices haunt the outskirts of the pieces, calling from some- where just too distant to make out. Waves of bass swell and break, leaving a tideline of end- less harmonics.

Occasionally composers can generate an environment that is utterly personal yet still invita- tional to the listener – Celestino is one such artist capable of doing this. On Kindling, you’re invited to a place of his creation, it’s somewhere warm, richly textured, but still very subtle and contoured. It’s a place where you can make your own pathway and discover your own hid- den sound worlds.

Wellington is a city encased by mountains and ocean. At times, it can seem as though there is no escape from the geographic boundaries that guard the city. From within this enclave, With Moths transmissions can be heard.

For the past few years, With Moths has been creating an uncomfortable decay of songs; tak- ing the corpse of gothic motifs and burying them deep in a wash of reverberant chorus and and wavering pitch. Keyboards, guitar and voice well up together, echoing against each other in an ill at ease call and response.

For Silence is the title of his latest work and focuses both aesthetic and lyrical concerns on issues of mortality, death and the act of passing. For Silence offers a haunted soundtrack to the specters of the living and the dead – it sketches out imaginary spaces in which these souls co-exist together.

Having previously issued editions for Kimberley Dawn and Vinyl Only Tapes, For Silence is his first edition for A Guide To Saints and threads a suite of new patches to his musical quilt.