Ryan Teague is a master craftsman. A sonic architect. A purveyor. Someone with a vision. He utilises his instrumental post-rock torpor and explodes it in a firecracker’s tribune. As at home in the world of Matmos-influenced soundtracks as electro-acoustica’s communal weekly party, ‘Site Specific’, his newest recording is a furore of cinematic cluster-funk and debris-dredging asteroid particles colliding like a comet, from a far-flung physicians mantle for the opaque, the abstract, and finally, the fully formed.
Generally, the new album occupies in a oasis beyond panic disorder point; where many neoclassical musicians are happy to jaunt the living daylights out of you. Teague is seducing us instead, eeking out a rhizome of gentrified ergonomic principles that slowly splinter in their percussive volley and parallel world melodic mirroring amnesia. So one melody forgets its line, and the next step is a dynamic encounter with the ultra-mundane. Instrumentation includes the string instrument family on ‘Site Specific’, and decks out its deal with emotiveness and candour.
What I love about releases like Ryan’s is a kind of post-post-ness about everything, a millenial anti-dirge and forfeit of the Germanic langweil. Boredom, problematic in its myelin sheath around the spider’s web of the violin, the cobwebs of the tabla, in between the acoustic guitar strings… ‘Site Specific’ feels like rejuvenation. Rejuvenation of spirit, of youth, of grace, and most of all, of creation. What a perfect way to end the year. Easily slips into my top 10 albums for 2016.
- Photo: Rebecca Cleal