Jazzfinger, "The Well of Used Dreams"

While acts like Vibracathedral Orchestra and Sunroof! (with whom Jazzfinger have played as part of) bask in the UK underground's glow Jazzfinger remain relatively, and curiously, under unexposed. Also unlike many of their contemporaries in the hard to pin down esoteric fucked up sounds / drone based scene Jazzfinger can easily cope without overindulging in lengthy freeform immolating noise shakedowns; this LP is about space, melody and texture. The way the perfect but ungraspable melody on "Secret Grandfather" seems to slip from the memory just before it loops round into focus again shows the duo are able to manipulate the intangible silences into form.

The best example of their approach to minimalism is the subtle restraint of the single pealing piano note of the introductory "Wooden Fireworks" that rings out over an intermittent beat and quivering drone; it's a hardly there splinter ov magick. There's a touch of dark peculiarity too with the almost Western saloon piano on "Crying Video" in the midst of the loose improvisational percussion and the menace of shaking dark bloody prenatal thing that moves over plucked strings on "I am in Blood". At times it becomes difficult to tell where a sound is sourced from and with "On Red Moon" the sound that could be just as easily be expertly leaked shortwave feedback as slices of egoless damaged free horn abuse. Even though Hasan Gaylani and Ben Jones are prepared to reach Jazzfinger's digits into several other musical territories the music never reeks of dilettantism. The only possible criticism that can be levelled at The Well of Used Dreams is that a couple of the song's harsher concluding edits can snap the head back into the reality of the surrounding environment a little too quickly.

With wintry moments amongst the broad autumnal mood they grasp the noisy nettle on "History of Tweed" with a substratum of industrial beats and constant tectonic electronic rumble. Picking up pace as it reaches the song's damaged vinegar strokes it releases blasts of near regal organ rise proudly from the static as if Coil had come back from the ether sieved through an aural super-8 filter. Jazzfinger's handmade reverberations have a readymade aged appearance that sounds more solid.

The album's finish comes heavily with its two closers but without the weight of a blow out. "Silver Glitter on the Summit of Everest" deals in Tibetan instrumentation and sounds with clashing strings rubbing up against electronic note picking which alchemises the CDR into helping to visualise a cold blue sky. The epic fifteen minute finale "The Lighthouse Keepers" keeps two steady soft(ish) hums beneath intermittent parallel systems checks which scratch themselves out of the plastic like the spinning discharge of a lighthouse. The apparent softness of the humming eventually gives way to the scraping metal of those difficult to identify horns/feedback and an organ that reaches skywards in circuitous gorgings.

As amorphous as The Well of Used Dreams manages to be it couldn't be called anything other than a consistently impressive and defining release. Slowly but surely Jazzfinger are creating an underground swell of completists and admirers and this is another essential release that needs to be tracked down while its still available in this impressive incarnation.

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