Ishmael Cormack – Ammil

You start to think “What gives?” with an album title like “Ammil”. Seemingly chemical related, this Ishmael Cormack debut on the wine-bottle-uncorking Krysalisound pacifier is a sheer calming, “drink it all in” ladle for the Spring season that is following us in the wake of the Coronavirus outbreak…

Yes, this album is ‘calm’. But the electro-acoustic drones are just something else. It recalls Paul Ferrini’s poetry, and where he says “you have to break through to where the pain is”, as if some encapsulation of wonder and release. And where the opener is light and plaintive, the second track “Bending Snow” intensifies the slushy grip of macro-movement in the soluble harmonic shifts that generate and regenerate on the entirety of the piece.

There is a great deal of “pure space” in this record, as if the mind has been filter-jug weaned several times of a liminal hymn, some kind of strange virus we call life. Of course waxing about poison is like dancing about architecture to the journalistic vanguard, at least what most on the base level think of as “good artwork” or “understandable messages”. And Cormack with this music paints that idea very clear in the listener’s head.

It sounds like he has found time to unclutter his brain of the troubles of anyone’s past and just, not to coin a phrase, rest in the peace of the present. With people dying all the time and a generalized castration weirdness of the media in recent times, where technology overtakes humanity, and racism is really xenophobia and bigotry, the openness and gentility of this sound map is an easy and inviting one to follow. It’s also a perfect starting point for the label itself, and at name your price on Bandcamp for a download it is well worth checking out.

www.krysalisound.bandcamp.com

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