En
The Absent Coast
- Catalog
- RS069
- Format
- LP
- Edition
- Edition of 300
- Released
- October 2010
En is the duo of San Francisco based multi-instrumentalists Maxwell August Croy and James Devane, and "The Absent Coast" is their debutncollection of recordings. The pair utilize a wide range ofninstrumentation - koto, guitar, vocals, rhodes, melodica, and piano,namong other devices - which is processed and refined into rich wallsnof reverberant bliss. With its hazy atmospherics, microtonal drones and plaintive tones, the album evokes the type of unplaceable nostalgia that accompanies the imaginary landscapes of distant memory. A diverse and carefully considered document, "The Absent Coast" is all soaring peaks, shadowed valleys and expansive plains. Edition of 300 LP's.
Tracklist
- A Dying Sun / Return to Holyoke
- Mother of Thousands
- The Absent Coast
- Honeysuckle Heart
- Miramar
- Polaris (The Celestial Arc)
- Ghosts
- Biezumd
- Maboroshi
- Pratyaya
Press
Another sublime drone album from the unshakably good Root Strata camp, En's The Absent Coast is a real upper tier ambient release. Distinguished by its depth and effortless musicality, this album is one for genre fans to really savour. After the sandblasting noise/tonal onslaught of 'A Dying Sun/Return To Holyoke', the album calibrates itself to a stately simmer that comes to life during the quite sublime 'Honeysuckle Heart', which combines glassy sustains with crackling, overdriven harp-like string plucks to exquisite effect. Elsewhere, 'Miramar' conjures a horizontal bowed soundscape that's somehow more visceral and emotive than the sum of its parts and the ionosphere-scraping 'Pratyaya' paradoxically combines Tim Hecker-style fiery arcs with the kind of effortless, droning sedation that Stars Of The Lid specialise in. Excellent. - Boomkat
The Absent Coast is the debut recording from the duo En, made up of James Devane and Maxwell Croy (one half of the duo that runs the Root Strata label), and is a gorgeous collection of melancholy, otherworldly dronemusic, a varied selection of miniature epics, each an evocative and emotional travelogue in sound, utilizing organs, melodica, piano, guitar, vocals, koto and various other instruments and devices, the duo weave lush expanses of layered, organic sonic energy, warm buzzing tones stretched into sheer blissy shimmer and lush chordal swells blurred into gauzy slow motion melodies become an ever shifting soundtrack to a series of fading memories, brief flickering filmstrips in sound, the indistinct images allowing the listener short glimpses of stories untold, decisions unmade, lives yet to be lived.
The opener is a rich crumbling landscape of layered shimmer, crackling with electrical energy, an energy which gradually dissipates, eventually leaving a smooth glassy stretch of gently pulsing thrum, eventually fading out completely, the resulting vacuum filled with a miniature symphony of scraped steel strings, their overtones ringing out in the ether, leaving shadowy melodic traces, those strangely melodic metal scrapings overflowing into yet another sprawl of lush layered longform dronemusic, a sea of softly undulating buzz, a mesmerizing field of sympathetic steel, which then itself blossoms into yet another bit of drone, this one a sun dappled bit of ethereal ambience, peppered with deep distorted notes, and flitting electrical fields, all wrapped in a woozy cocoon of burnished blur.
And so The Absent Coast unfolds, waves of hissy white noise wash over plaintive piano like some late afternoon sonic sea, glistening fields of celestial glimmer shed notes like falling stars, the result a prismatic cascade of unfulfilled wishes rendered in sound, deep drifts of muted melody are stretched and pulled apart, letting the light from within infuse the sounds all around them, ghostlike drones change color before our very ears, like the leaves turning, Jeckian dirges crawl glacially through moonlight, spitting sparks that smolder in blues and greens, leaving the glow of gradually dying embers, a delicate piano's notes send sonic ripples into the ether, the melodies overlapping and intertwining creating subtle ever shifting patterns that gradually flicker and fade, and finally, hushed sonic shadows give way to a soft sun dappled blush, which in turn becomes a slowly intensifying radiance, a sky full of luminous flares, a visual symphony of sound, lush and rich and almost orchestral, only to finally dissolve, the colors fading to brown, then black, the sound following suit. So so nice. - Aquarius Records
En is the duo of San Francisco based multi-instrumentalists Maxwell August Croy and James Devane who play slow-thundering drone ecstasy using guitar, vocals, koto, melodic, piano, Rhodes etc. The style is kinda reminiscent of the vertical ascension approach of UK heads like John Clyde-Evans, Matthew Bower’s Sunroof/Hototogisu and Vibracathedral Orchestra but the sound is more hi-fi and all-encompassing, generating gorgeous blooms of constantly peaking pink tone full of indeterminate instrumental detail that eventually implode into string drones with an earthy folk appeal. Some of the dizzy string vortices touch on the late Coil line-up that featured Bill Breeze on violin with fields of singing overtones that sound simultaneously ancient and futuristic but really, this is one of the most beautifully brain-caressing drone works to come out of the American underground in some time. For fans of Ensemble Economique/RV Paintings, Axolotl, Andrew Chalk, Tony Conrad, Keiji Haino et al. Edition of 300 copies. Recommended. Volcanic Tongue
The Absent Coast is the debut recording from the duo En, made up of James Devane and Maxwell Croy (one half of the duo that runs the Root Strata label), and is a gorgeous collection of melancholy, otherworldly dronemusic, a varied selection of miniature epics, each an evocative and emotional travelogue in sound, utilizing organs, melodica, piano, guitar, vocals, koto and various other instruments and devices, the duo weave lush expanses of layered, organic sonic energy, warm buzzing tones stretched into sheer blissy shimmer and lush chordal swells blurred into gauzy slow motion melodies become an ever shifting soundtrack to a series of fading memories, brief flickering filmstrips in sound, the indistinct images allowing the listener short glimpses of stories untold, decisions unmade, lives yet to be lived.
The opener is a rich crumbling landscape of layered shimmer, crackling with electrical energy, an energy which gradually dissipates, eventually leaving a smooth glassy stretch of gently pulsing thrum, eventually fading out completely, the resulting vacuum filled with a miniature symphony of scraped steel strings, their overtones ringing out in the ether, leaving shadowy melodic traces, those strangely melodic metal scrapings overflowing into yet another sprawl of lush layered longform dronemusic, a sea of softly undulating buzz, a mesmerizing field of sympathetic steel, which then itself blossoms into yet another bit of drone, this one a sun dappled bit of ethereal ambience, peppered with deep distorted notes, and flitting electrical fields, all wrapped in a woozy cocoon of burnished blur.
And so The Absent Coast unfolds, waves of hissy white noise wash over plaintive piano like some late afternoon sonic sea, glistening fields of celestial glimmer shed notes like falling stars, the result a prismatic cascade of unfulfilled wishes rendered in sound, deep drifts of muted melody are stretched and pulled apart, letting the light from within infuse the sounds all around them, ghostlike drones change color before our very ears, like the leaves turning, Jeckian dirges crawl glacially through moonlight, spitting sparks that smolder in blues and greens, leaving the glow of gradually dying embers, a delicate piano's notes send sonic ripples into the ether, the melodies overlapping and intertwining creating subtle ever shifting patterns that gradually flicker and fade, and finally, hushed sonic shadows give way to a soft sun dappled blush, which in turn becomes a slowly intensifying radiance, a sky full of luminous flares, a visual symphony of sound, lush and rich and almost orchestral, only to finally dissolve, the colors fading to brown, then black, the sound following suit. So so nice. - Aquarius Records
En is the duo of San Francisco based multi-instrumentalists Maxwell August Croy and James Devane who play slow-thundering drone ecstasy using guitar, vocals, koto, melodic, piano, Rhodes etc. The style is kinda reminiscent of the vertical ascension approach of UK heads like John Clyde-Evans, Matthew Bower’s Sunroof/Hototogisu and Vibracathedral Orchestra but the sound is more hi-fi and all-encompassing, generating gorgeous blooms of constantly peaking pink tone full of indeterminate instrumental detail that eventually implode into string drones with an earthy folk appeal. Some of the dizzy string vortices touch on the late Coil line-up that featured Bill Breeze on violin with fields of singing overtones that sound simultaneously ancient and futuristic but really, this is one of the most beautifully brain-caressing drone works to come out of the American underground in some time. For fans of Ensemble Economique/RV Paintings, Axolotl, Andrew Chalk, Tony Conrad, Keiji Haino et al. Edition of 300 copies. Recommended. Volcanic Tongue