Podcasts | Dronecasts

Dronecast II

By Robin Smith | 23 September 2015

Art: http://adipocere.tumblr.com/

If you’re the kind of listener who rewinds songs before their completion in a hopeless attempt to snatch up a melody or hold a real good lyric in your hands: hello. This dronecast is dedicated to you. We’re not alone on this one; Danny Clay is relating to us in a big way, and in typical stuffy form, he’s doing it on an album dedicated to a Schubert piece…dedicated to a Goethe text. The flickering sounds of Ganymede—malfunctioning on a music box, through sine waves and upon a table of toy instruments–represent Clay trying to keep one of his favourite compositions going forever. His tribute to Schubert is humbling: its restful but wobbling sounds make infinity sound no more reliable than dripping candle wax.

In that flimsy spirit, this mix sort of drones but features plenty of melodic imposters, in the form of Inner Travels’ Phases Of a Forest Moon–which is so gleefully new age it comes replete with rainwater samples and old-school keyboards–or in the yawning vaporwave of Dang Olsen Dream Tapes’ new record, whose synths do forward rolls on gym mats. Of all the posers here, though, I’m surprised to welcome Nicolas Jaar via his new Pomegranates record; a self-commissioned score for an old Sergie Parajanov film, it collates clanking field recordings, piano melodies and fractured club jams into the year’s most beguiling musical nonsense. To those who fell in love with the house-imbibing Space Is Only Noise, it might sound like four different albums nobody wanted. To me, it’s the album of the year; no one self-impeaches like Jaar.

When you get bored of watching Jaar fail to dance, feel free to have your daydreams ruined by Strie, who scrapes metal against clouds on her centrepiece to the gently harsh Struktura; you could also pierce your sofa cushions with some of John Chantler’s chamber noise, or rise awkwardly out of the bathtub to a swelling drone by the Nag’s Head. All fine pastimes.



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[42:46]


1. Danny Clay: “Glow III”

2. Inner Travels: “Phase 7”

3. Nicolas Jaar: “Construction”

  • (06:53–12:13)
  • from Pomegranates (2015)

4. Strië: “Chance and Order”

5. The Nag’s Head: “Glass and Steel”

6. John Chantler: “The Long Shadow of Decline, Pt. II”

7. Kara Lis Coverdale & LXV: “Informant”

8. Felicia Atkinson: “The Book is the Territory”

9. Dang Olsen Dream Tape: “Ganji Yomes Leaving Home”