IVORY TRADE - THE DISTAL PASSAGE
caprice & necessity 2016, edition of 30
"A further excavation into melancholy & longing" - CAPRICE & NECESSITY
i remember seeing IVORY TRADE's AMONG OTHERS on TOMENTOSA a while back - "Expressive & depressed, lo-fi compositions" obviously piqued my curiosity, but it was sold out, long gone at the source WEIGHT OF AGES as well, so i didn't dig too deep, noting impossible editions -one of 22, another of 7-- i have wondered how infinitesimal editions work on a personal level, in my experience about a dozen are earmarked for tacit subscriptions by friends, too few and i'd end up disappointing folks who i interact with on a regular basis - anyway, i was able to catch this one in the nick of time - 30 seems to be a breakpoint for good chance of detection by my active and far reaching radar, though i won't pretend i'm one of the best hunter-gatherers, as i bought one of the last copies
anyway-- THE DISTAL PASSAGE lives up to its succinct description - industrial dark ambient drone tape manipulation, almost JANDEKIAN in its unabashed intimate loner weirdness, close but not quite comparisons might include brazen weirdo tape droners like LOST TRAIL and SKITTISH ARM, maybe higher profile catch-alls like SPARKLING WIDE PRESSURE and YELLOW SWANS, but ultimately i figure this guy (?) is a belgian incarnation of GREG GORLEN - again i didn't do much diggin around, but WEIGHT OF AGES seems to have been abandoned for next-phase hq CAPRICE & NECESSITY, much like how GORLEN retired TURMERIC MAGNITUDES for CASCADING FRAGMENTS, and i wouldn't be surprised if most of the artists are in fact the same person - i don't know, i could be way off - in any case i would file this alongside much of GORLEN's work under "distressed meditation music" with its grainy desynced loop hypnosis, complimentary unknown tones, found sounds and tape saturation, not afraid of being "noisy" while for my money packing just as much thought-obliterating firepower as any acclaimed classical ambient title - see my idea of meditation is crack open a good beer or pour a nice rye, load a tape like this and let both of em go to work
highest possible recommendation
