See bottom of this post for digest commentary.Ones/Hands – 1997-2005Jeph Jerman and friends kick back in a calmly collected concrete kerfuffle, warm ones soothing calloused hands in sedate, contemplative, repose. Jeph Jerman, aka he of the
Rough Music, does seem to shed some of the rough exterior when tasked in the milieu of less rough-minded company. (Ignore here any Jeph Jerman seeing release on
labels otherwise devoted to harsh noise.) On this occasion, it is the company of Daniel Mitha and Nick Phillips to whom the de-roughening duties are duly delegated, the Jermanic detritus of daily dink and doink gentrified over successive stages of softly glowing refinement.
The refinements tend to manifest as silky ambient strands, drugged out, chimeric, laying lucid dream beds upon which badly-kempt rustles and rattles lend a quaint sort of nostalgia. Call me a romantic, but it's frankly hard not to get swept up in the loosely-tethered...flotsam and jetsam....bobbing bumping and thumping merrily along the gently droning streams, a disordered percussion of non-sense made sense-able by virtue of the carefully moored delegation of disparate elements so elegantly drawn, quartered, spaced. Into empty-spaced quarters, attention is drawn, wide-eyed, moth-like, flitting along edges of radiant spectrum, rough splashes of clink and clunk rendered dainty, intransigent, swallowed up in the smooth caress of blushing ambient shimmer.
In the opening moments it is the drone which slowly serves to insulate the rougher passages, sustained horn-like undertow set off by feeding-back cycles of keening, glassy, sheen. Ritual suggestions of discrete echoing percussions and pings make way for closer-mic'd bonks, rattles, scraps, rustling cutleries clanking and scraping against a play of uneven stringed plucking. Quite an abundance of variegated debris, sprawled out as far as the ear can hear, unwilling to get busy or threaten with accumulations of mass. Rather a steadily meandering filling-out of the audible field, crystalline particulars twinkling in the balmy atmosphere.
At about ten minutes the drone fades out and we're plonked ass-deep in the Jerman zone, a clattering clutter of clinkily clonk ker-blonk- pots pans the works- backwashed seashells wheezing in chapped commiseration. Good opportunity to insinuate yer scrutinies among the cracked interstecies of dis-tethered disarray before a rustic finger picking folk-inflection ushers us into sussurant jumble-seas, full up kitchen sink inundation of climactic shake rattle n roll.
On to the second half and a significantly depleted range of scraps. Wide-panned clinks, clanks, string-plunks, mic thumps. Regular cycle of skittering metallic scuttle. Distant pooch yap duly rounding out proceedings. A whiny garage door drags open, trash-cans get hauled out to the curb. Teensy glints of irregular feedback-ish-squeal complement reedy wood-whistles half-heartedly affecting a distuned melodic inclination like some faux urban primitive primordial pre-musical piss-take.
Then the grand finale. Background hum rises up from the scraps, hollow, ghostly, almost completely smothering the all and sundry. By layers and by degrees, the all and sundry starts to elongate, stretching out in steadily cycling overlaps of bright, glittering, acoustic buzz. Sniff. And correct me if I'm wrong, but something seems to be burning. Here again in backwashed streams of tubular seashell sussurance, in the snap crackle pop of smoldering leaves, a growing sense of unease begins to ruffle, the sound field fairly full-up and seemingly expanding in perpetuity, and, end.
Digest spewRough n tumble Jermanic kerfuffle, the detritus of daily dink and doink, calmly collected in meandering streams of tranquil repose. The undertow, however, is strong. Dip a little deeper- well, a lot deeper- and perspective starts to fracture, the cracked interstecies of dis-tethered clinkily clonk ker-blonk merrily bobbing bumping and thumping among myriad percussive insistence, all warmly coated in loving droning embrace. Allow the attentions to wander, to sink, deep, into the variegated scraps of debris, the sedate becalming of rustle and rattle. Ah. Then something spiky pokes you in the butt.
