By It’s our Bandcamp Picks of the Week, featuring the angry noise punk of Dust Muscles and the colorful and spirited ambient music of Carlos Ferreira!
Carlos Ferreira – ISOLATIONISM
Genre: Ambient, Drone, Experimental
Favorite Tracks: “An Extension of Breath,” “Living a Metaphor,” “Quietude II”
Carlos Ferreira’s music has always emphasized listening, but ISOLATIONISM takes that infatuation to entirely new places. The Brazilian guitarist and composer’s previous releases bloomed through quiet ambient electronica, using field recordings and subtle instrumentation to build the dynamic-but-patient sound heard on 2021’s SIX POSTCARDS & OTHER STORIES and his 2022 Yumi Iwaki collaboration TENDERNESS. His music is never tough on the ears, but always careful to turn your vision towards the details rather than burying them under the larger arrangements. But with the support of experimental heavyweight label AKP Recordings, Ferreira allows his latest album to merge seamlessly into the dark, ISOLATIONISM introduces floor-shaking drones and gorgeous woodwind textures to his usual synth magic for pieces with immense energy and more space to disperse it than ever. It’s incredibly exciting to hear him in such rich new territory, and the resulting pieces being so strong makes listening to him play with darker and heavier instrumentation all the more special. Handling all these new ideas with all the same love and forethought of his softest albums, Ferreira provides ample opportunity for himself and a handful of collaborators to make ISOLATIONISM one of this year’s most distinctive ambient listens, utilizing his signature ambient frameworks to make the album’s cavernous drones and sharp edges double in potency.
ISOLATIONISM works because, for the most part, it’s not too far from home—all the warm harmonic layers and soft-attack synths of Ferreira’s older music are still everywhere, be it in the windy drones snaking through “Artificial Lungs” or the sensitive chimes sketched around birdsong and blocky piano in the fantastic opener “An Extension of Breath.” The vast majority of the album is prepared for you to sink into it even with its colder temperatures. “Quietude II” brings in industrial drones and water-drip chimes to form the dark zone of its cavernous electronica, flashes of gorgeous underlying harmonics and bell tones enveloping all the available space across its nine minutes, while the shorter and sweeter “Living a Metaphor” gets to be one of the most gorgeous instrumental pieces this year with its short melodic phrases and expressionistic piano. Ferreira is able to meld his moodier ambitions with the elegance of his work over the past few years. So when the album does start to get strange, it’s even more of a treat—“Naturaleza Muerta,” with its twinkly toy piano and looping organ chords, gives Ferreira the opportunity to dive into avant-garde writing without curbing the album experience to fit it in, a short and unique detour that adds to the experience rather than pulling attention away from Ferreira’s magnificent dark ambient. Rather than treating ISOLATIONISM as a departure, Ferreira pulls you even deeper by stepping away from the dusky horizons and dreamlike soundscaping, disappearing into midnight black and carving small cracks for his glowing instrumentation to burst through without revealing everything in the process.
Making experimental ambient feel colorful and spirited with its limited palette, ISOLATIONISM’s spirited compositions leave you enraptured in Ferreira’s world. Though more mysterious than ever, his music stays immensely inviting, insisting on being patiently looked through so the growth and decay in each piece can be granted the greatest possible appreciation. Rarely do albums in this vein ask you to look through them so thoroughly, Ferreira using his skills as a composer to slip little flourishes and countermelodies into ambient pieces built to refresh your entire spirit. ISOLATIONISM is on the bridge between experimental music’s testing of the mind and ambient’s connection to the heart, and balances those two responsibilities with Ferreira’s signature finesse and conviction. Along with a 24-run of cassettes, ISOLATIONISM is available for purchase now on Ferreira’s Bandcamp. [Lurien Zitterkopf]
Dust Muscle – EP
Genre: Noise Punk
Favorite Tracks: “A Gift,” “A Trap”
Whether merited or not, I’ve been angry my whole life. But it’s not static—the understated anger of a pre-teen differs from dramatic teen rage which differs from the pseudo-nihilism of my mid-30s. But music’s always defined and contextualized these feelings, and at this juncture it’s all about Dust Muscle. Still, this is an anger like never before—of societal decay, near-endless disappointment, and that sense that this is all that’s left. Intended or not, the Chicago band’s five-track EP channels those very sentiments.
Just spin “A Dream”—that ferocious, endlessly assaultive bassline practically chases you like an ax murder before the snarling vocals and massive rhythms finish the job. But even when “Piss and Shit” lightens the approach with garage-ian undertones, the band’s speed remains “grab listeners by the neck and dine on their buccal fat.” And, sure, I experienced these same feelings listening to Poison the Well circa 1999, but there’s a reason stuff like this works: rage is an easy enough formula, and if you can capture and spread it via music, then it feels like the most compelling shared experience, outshining love, peace, earnestness, etc.
Yet to call Dust Muscle’s EP “totes angry” feels dismissive. “A Gift” takes the same parts as its sibling song and leans more toward the realm of edgy post-punk—and that makes the coming pivot all the more effective. “Hell Isn’t Far” feels wholly similar, and yet that deliberate pacing extends the textures here while adding nuance to the deluge of intense emotions. “A Trap” feels like even more of the same, but that’s maybe the point: it’s the third piece of the “A” triad, and that rage is once more textured while serving as this accidental commentary on the nature of anger. Which is all to say, there’s so much more to it than quick, burning blows, and it’s evolution over time both grounds and extends these sentiments.
And so all of that together makes this a very angry record for a very angry time. This is the first time I’ve really made peace with the rage that defines life. Can we/I do and feel better? Sure, but there are machinations and intentions beyond anyone’s control, and rage is a thing to integrate rather than overcome. It may seem like existence is only getting more infuriating (and there’s little argument it ain’t), but Dust Muscle demonstrate that there is a catharsis in ripping these feelings apart, layering them in new ways, and smashing ourselves into ’em time and time again. It’s not a record to hope for peace, but forging it under the burning sun of our messed up times, and creating something better because of these feelings and not in spite of them.
Maybe the more well-adjusted will have a different response to EP. But if the world makes your blood boil as a default, turn this on for a proper study in the ways that rage can define life without overwhelming us. It sure beats smashing a flatscreen TV, yeah? Listen to it now over on Bandcamp. [Chris Coplan]
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