Tag: Foil Imprints

NRV’s Notari EP is an Aural Evocation of the Tranquility of Deep Memory

NRV <i>Notari</i> cover

Sendai based ambient artist Nerve (Manabu Ito), as NRV, released his latest EP Notari in July 2021 on Foil Imprints and distilled the essence of the tranquil moments captured in deep places in our memories. The hazy drones and distant, abstracted to a blur of melodies and eroded feedback convey a sense of emotional place where the urgency of everyday life is blocked by a protective cloud cover that also conveys your spirit along a path that soothes the psyche and encourages an opening up to simple stimuli that can be missed in a sea of demanding content. “Rice field and river, 1974” and “i want a white petal in my teacup” as titles have a Zen-like poetic quality to suggest times when you are struck by simple things, simple desires that nourish a sense of inner peace rather than call for a dramatic response. In a time and in a culture that all but requires we push ourselves to the maximum for the requirements of an economic system that is destroying the planet and crushing everyone under, even those who benefit the most, music like this may not hit you over the head with its importance, it is not something over which to get “stoked,” but it may be the sort of thing we need more of to get through to a saner future human civilizational baseline as embodied by these gorgeous five tracks. Watch the evocative EP video preview below and listen to the EP on Bandcamp and consider purchasing the cassette version and listen analog in an appropriate setting like looking out the window during a snowstorm.

Chris Child & Micah Frank Evoke a Sense of Ancient Civilization and Technology on Ambient Drone Track “Peering At Dawn”

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Chris Child & Micah Frank, photo courtesy the artists

“Peering At Dawn” sounds like what might happen if some artificial intelligence from Puma Punku or Göbekli Tepe had somehow made its way to the northeast of the modern United States tasked with creating theme music for the local environment only to be discovered by local explorers in the grotto where this artifact was hidden for millennia and documented its creations to sample through analog synths and old tape machines that occasionally warped the source recordings. It’s that enigmatic and seemingly out of step with standard reality. The same could be said for songs by Boards of Canada and Seefeel where alternate realities seem to blend and put the sounds out of time in their music. It’s reminiscent of weirdo, tripped out library music and thus the sense of having come from another time and place before the modern era but difficult to accurately place with its mixture of blurred tones and the background sound like generative sound replicating the sense of phosphenes. The song hails from Chris Child & Micah Frank’s forthcoming release Tape Loops Vol. 1 due out on 8/23 through Foil Imprints. For now, though, listen to “Peering At Dawn” on Soundcloud and follow Chris Child & Micah Frank at the links provided.

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