The music is deeply ritualistic, in the way that a tide or overlapped set of notes refracts the meaning of the preceding one. This ebb and flow in tightness like Brian Grainger (Milieu) and William Basinski tells us more of what is at stake. The love in the sound comes down to meditation, meditating (on) – soft playing, concentric regard for a “hook” or “tap out”, a marker. What the listener chooses to take from rituals are their own investment, but Paw Grabowski’s slow moving organ parts are quite succinctly lathered with portent rather than pretense. And this certainly makes them stand out.
øjeRum, the audio project of the Danish visual artist Paw, carries with it visual life-affirming qualities, too. Quite alike to the visual geometries of installation artists, including Simon Scott, Kenneth Kirschner and Marsen Jules, the transparency for an element of the nouveau vogue is set up in tantamount positioning to the releases art with the resampling technique. One that belies and carries so many loop-using musicians further afield into group albums, and ensemble playing. oJerum is not lost in loop orgy however, creating subtle shifts in tone from chord changes that manipulate the glaze like basting a turkey in the oven. At the right temperature, and the right time, the melancholy traverses the tightrope of fear into a heavenly stasis.
Indeed, much of the premise for Krysalis Sound label releases is based around heat – turning up the heat on a subject, or even bringing pure rock solid ice into focus, as on the “Untitled_TeVet” release I last reviewed for Fluid Radio. The label’s key strength has always been presenting intriguing music in lovingly packaged cases, and although their newsletters state they are trying to cut down on environmental emissions, one step at a time – for me this type of release is something essential for the drone lover in you, a half hour drift through sheer weightlessness.