Stalactite - S/T (ESP Institute)

  Quote

Stalactite is a collaborative recording project by renown Japanese artist and multi-instrumentalist Susumu Mukai AKA Zongamin and producer Drew Brown, whose discography ranges from his own group Off World to a variety of integral productions for artists such as Blonde Redhead and Beck. Their self-titled debut for the ESP Institute is a grand gesture, a broad stroke that illustrates both singular focus and vast complexity, which is no easy feat considering the almost oppressive immediacy and availability of tools at the disposal of contemporary artists. There’s a level of creative confidence and discipline needed to work so fundamentally, and whether or not the listener has an appetite refined enough to process the tasteful subtleties throughout this production, these same subtleties accumulate regardless and land that listener in a highly considered and developed space. The deceptively naive melodic approach consistent across these nine tracks can feel transparent, familiar to a point the listener can anticipate its path, but when listening with acute focus we find a variable range of texture, temperature, depth and negative space. As alumni of the Minimal, Cold Wave, Synth Pop era, Susumu and Drew successfully personify a motley crew of synthesizers to work in concert, reduced to their core personalities and presented as their most honest selves — austere, shy, cinematic, percolating, bulbous, glistening, cantankerous, rubberized, clumsy and animated. Each masterfully paired with complimentary counterparts, these players assemble into a sound-stage we typically find in live recordings, enveloping and inviting us to the center of an acoustic cavern to wade through sonic impressions of monolithic stalactites. 

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Highly recommended.

I wish mods would stop you for posting 30 albums a week on here.

I see your style of posting like a label representative at this point

  On 3/24/2022 at 6:05 PM, Ayya Khema said:

I wish mods would stop you for posting 30 albums a week on here.

I see your style of posting like a label representative at this point

Thank you, I aim to please.

Here's the short version of what I'm actually doing: I'm (also) a DJ and I love (mainly) electronic (dance) music, so I go through a couple of hundred releases per week spanning various (sub)genres; out of those, the ones I post here about are either on topic as IDM or IDM-adjacent, or something I think people here would be interested in. For every release post there's a handful more I could do (but don't), and maybe 10-15 not worth it. I'm curating for myself, but I also post things that I deem the choicest bits here, because WATMM is a music forum and caters to a very niche audience which I'm a part of. If this bothers you, perhaps WATMM is not for you. To me, it's a labour of love.

I care because you do.

  On 3/24/2022 at 6:05 PM, Ayya Khema said:

I wish mods would stop you for posting 30 albums a week on here.

I see your style of posting like a label representative at this point

we need the mods to issue a mandate to stop dcom from posting lmao. honestly dude, you're like one of the big baby brains of watmm.

@dcom you rule, thanks for keeping so much new music flowing into this forum