BEXAR BEXAR - tropism

(CD, own)

I like the rain. Rain is a giver of life just the way the sun and the air are. And then the rain ceases and the world starts to dry and everything glows just like on the first day. If you really care about things you ought to take them as they come and then try to improve and help them to their and your very best. Everything else is just half-assed. That doesn not necessarily mean, they should be big and impressive and awe-inspiring, most of them won’t be, actually, though nothing can be said against it if they turn out that way. It just means that you should not just let some things run their course but positively encourage them to move onwards. And even if they seem to be moving circles or swirling around in the air in a timeless and aimless fashion, then that is okay, because not the aim, the purpose is what counts.

Music that refrains from a target or a focus is usually hard to decipher, especially when it seems to lay everything bare to the bones, but then there is not a lot to see anymore. Your senses seem to fail you, because you do hear a lot, but taking it up into your hands trying to analyze you can’t come up with anything. Sounds like ephemeral vaports that evade through the thin air nevertheless leave a definite impact on the listener. Starting with the untouchable feeling that things never cease to exist, even when they somehow dissolve or vanish from our sensual dimension, a lot of modern electronic composition exists on the notion that it is possible to re-introduce or enhance the impressions of lost data from the other senses with audible impressions.

Variation happens in multitudes in the details and the inner currents of the tracks, while the overal flow an arrangement remains the same, even seems to stay the same over the course of the whole ten tracks that make up “tropism”: But a lot of attention and detail goes into the minute details, translucent and lucid additions and arabesques, that fill the body of the music to make it lighter.

From the guitarless paradigm of some years ago via the re-introduction of the most basic popular music instrument to the basic principle of electronic experiments – “tropism” adds another layer to the ever expanding artistic body around the wooden six string body. The guitar as a basic instrument in two layers – one a widely clearly picked guitar echoing sentimentality and nostalgia of small beachside vilages or lonely walks through the woods or rainy Sundays spent next to the windowsill looking out at the busy people below. (I demand there should be singular genre nomination for records like this.) The other layer the de- and reconstruction of these sounds into something new and then something different again. This way the strummed or picked notes meet with the humming and soothing electronic sounds and loops in a gentle clash. From the visions of John Fahey to the dreams of summer of Fennesz to the sunlight version of Loren Connors meeting Mitchell Akiyama or Andrea Belfi.