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Coelacanth, "Mud Wall"
Helen Scarsdale
Loren Chasse and Jim Haynes make a very strange breed of murmuring andthrobbing music. Where other sound-sculptors might keep a consistentlyharmonious shift at work in their music in order to provide a sense ofchange and movement, these two are content with adding glitches,static, and faults to their instruments in order to affect a drift inthe music that could be almost unnoticeably small, but might also turnout to be radical in degree. Mud Wallsoriginally appeared on the Mystery Sea label in an edited form.Rereleased by Helen Scarsdale with twenty additional minutes of music,it is a consistently alien and confusing recording. There runsthroughout the duration of this one-track, fifty-eight minute record anoticeable hiss that becomes a bit annoying at times, but it alsoserves as the central element of the music and is about the only thingthat holds the album together as a whole. Two distant points on therecord share a similar trait: the sound of jewelry or glass rollingabout in a jar. Outside of these few elements, Mud Walls soundslike a bit of muddled sound-collage to me. This is part of what makesthe record so confusing. I know that, at certain points, the musicsuddenly shifts direction and introduces a new sound to focus on, butthat sound always seems to succumb to the hiss that is so aggravatinglyomnipresent. Going back over the record and skipping in between variouspoints in time, it is quite obvious that Coelacanth has a good varietyof tones, found sounds, and strange samples that are strung together bya universal mystery. Something happens in between these sections ofdiversity, then, that make the album sound all too samey. This isanother confusing aspect of this record: I didn't like it at first, itsimmovable and fixed nature simply didn't appeal to me the way otherdroned-out records did. I listened to it twice, anyways. By the timeI'd become frustrated with myself for not being able figure out whatdisliked about this record, I'd probably gone through the record tentimes. A few more listens and I was able to pick out the small detailsthat weren't so quickly obvious. And here I sit now, wondering why ittook so long to figure out the obvious. The different sections of thisrecord are, in hindsight, obvious. No matter how many times I repeatthat to myself the music ends up feeling too monotone by the end of thealbum. The actual process of listening to the music turns everythinginto a homogenous wall of sound where very few heterogeneous elementscan stand out. Knowing now what my source of displeasure has been, it'shard for me to not recommend the music. The trick the music played onmy head through subsequent listens was frustrating, but it was alsoentertaining enough to keep me listening and to keep me finding newelements on the record. There's a fantastic series of ideas or quotesthat serve as liner notes and one of them is particularly descriptiveof the music: "I can describe it in no other way than this: in thatmoment, I was certain there were ancient forces listening... in asilence like fossils." The silent transitions and changes on thisrecord can only barely hide that there is something more happeningbehind the inertia. -
Loren Chasse and Jim Haynes make a very strange breed of murmuring andthrobbing music. Where other sound-sculptors might keep a consistentlyharmonious shift at work in their music in order to provide a sense ofchange and movement, these two are content with adding glitches,static, and faults to their instruments in order to affect a drift inthe music that could be almost unnoticeably small, but might also turnout to be radical in degree. Mud Wallsoriginally appeared on the Mystery Sea label in an edited form.Rereleased by Helen Scarsdale with twenty additional minutes of music,it is a consistently alien and confusing recording. There runsthroughout the duration of this one-track, fifty-eight minute record anoticeable hiss that becomes a bit annoying at times, but it alsoserves as the central element of the music and is about the only thingthat holds the album together as a whole. Two distant points on therecord share a similar trait: the sound of jewelry or glass rollingabout in a jar. Outside of these few elements, Mud Walls soundslike a bit of muddled sound-collage to me. This is part of what makesthe record so confusing. I know that, at certain points, the musicsuddenly shifts direction and introduces a new sound to focus on, butthat sound always seems to succumb to the hiss that is so aggravatinglyomnipresent. Going back over the record and skipping in between variouspoints in time, it is quite obvious that Coelacanth has a good varietyof tones, found sounds, and strange samples that are strung together bya universal mystery. Something happens in between these sections ofdiversity, then, that make the album sound all too samey. This isanother confusing aspect of this record: I didn't like it at first, itsimmovable and fixed nature simply didn't appeal to me the way otherdroned-out records did. I listened to it twice, anyways. By the timeI'd become frustrated with myself for not being able figure out whatdisliked about this record, I'd probably gone through the record tentimes. A few more listens and I was able to pick out the small detailsthat weren't so quickly obvious. And here I sit now, wondering why ittook so long to figure out the obvious. The different sections of thisrecord are, in hindsight, obvious. No matter how many times I repeatthat to myself the music ends up feeling too monotone by the end of thealbum. The actual process of listening to the music turns everythinginto a homogenous wall of sound where very few heterogeneous elementscan stand out. Knowing now what my source of displeasure has been, it'shard for me to not recommend the music. The trick the music played onmy head through subsequent listens was frustrating, but it was alsoentertaining enough to keep me listening and to keep me finding newelements on the record. There's a fantastic series of ideas or quotesthat serve as liner notes and one of them is particularly descriptiveof the music: "I can describe it in no other way than this: in thatmoment, I was certain there were ancient forces listening... in asilence like fossils." The silent transitions and changes on thisrecord can only barely hide that there is something more happeningbehind the inertia. -
