Untitled 01 off Good Stuff House's Untitled debut LP (a reissue TIME-LAG RECORDS' 2006 CD-R release). Out Tuesday July 23 on LP, CS & DL c/o <a href="http://holodeckrecords.com" target="blank"><b>HOLODECK</b></a>
~
Good Stuff House couldn't be more aptly named if they tried. This trio of Scott Tuma along with Zelienople's Matt Christensen and Mike Weis has been conspicuously absent for a while, but this reissue of their untitled debut serves as a reminder of their potency. Americana is a term that gets tossed around often, but in these dusty hollows it gains meaning. Translucent tones hover in empty space, trembling as they hesitantly coalesce. Folk axioms are broken down into dust so they can be woven back into something new, something beautiful.

Dark passages become platforms for larger, more intricate layers. Sunlight creeps in and reverberates through the aural haze as each small element becomes a building block in the light. The tiniest moments are amplified through Good Stuff House's prism as sepia-toned memories become blanketed in vivid color. Miniscule sonic creaks become infinitely spacious drones. Drifting through waves in the atmosphere, Good Stuff House turn forgotten reflections into vivid reveries in the blink of an eye.

Good Stuff House - Untitled 01

<a href="http://www.indianqueenrecords.com/iqrecords/releases/silent-land-time-machine-i-am-no-longer-alone-with-myself-and-can-only-artificially-recall-the-scary-and-beautiful-feeling-of-solitude-ep-iqr003/?preview=true&preview_id=142&preview_nonce=d025267c50" target="blank">I AM NO LONGER ALONE WITH MYSELF AND CAN ONLY ARTIFICIALLY RECALL THE SCARY AND BEAUTIFUL FEELING OF SOLITUDE</a>

Silent Land Time Machine’s latest work I am no longer alone with myself and can only artificially recall the scary and beautiful feeling of solitude speaks in an oneiric and numinous tongue but is replete with durability and coherence – a rare and intriguing mixture. There exist only subtle threads of aesthetic continuity from the artist’s debut &hope still (TIME-LAG Records), where guitar dominates in the main, with the music shifting its emphasis toward micro electronic assemblages – at times damaged, turbulent, and percussive, at others lulling, plaintive, and melodic – with naïve, organic, and lucidly processed string arrangements woven throughout. All this aesthetic revision is accomplished while increasing the breadth, accessibility, and emotional resonance of his sonic palette.

The texture of SLTM’s EP is gentle-haze meets mechanical-grit, with lustrous swells, rapturous glitches, and clear but effaced tones guiding the listener through its ambitious harmonic and narrative arcs. The album’s emotive thrust, as its Brobdingnagian title suggests, is a palpable sense of longing. This music cuts to the heart of the tension between the vast, chaotic, terrifying, and fragmentary terrain of the spirit that subsumes the artist-at-work and the striving of the individual to reconcile his identity with the memory of a unitary and authentic peace. All of this and more pours out of this music, which, time and again, constructs scaffolding from sped-up and slowed-down self-generated samples and colorful acoustic tones. There is a depth of narrative arrangement and keen sense of how sonic elements relate to one another here that opens up pathways of communication, dimensions of integration to and from the listener, and confirms this album’s successes at translating the nuanced fluidity of dreams and hidden desires of the unconscious into potent orchestral miniatures.

This collection of “songs” is not without a childish playfulness, Scandinavian darkness, and a tact and groove that is as uplifting and memorable as it is heart-rending, bewildering, and esoteric. Bedtime listening, yes, but more than that, tunes to frolic to and yearn with through the dream that is waking life.

Silent Land Time Machine - I am no longer alone with myself..EP - 01 even floating islands fall

Silent Land Time Machine - I am no longer alone with myself...EP - 02 remembering names

Smokey Emery’s Quartz EP is a bona fide document of sonorities from the purgatorial regions. Distorted and catchy tape loops that take you from the inter-planes of the mind to the carnival, where the festivities seem at once sinister and endearing beneath the changing light of sooty reverb and effectual tape hiss. These deceptive washes of underwater tones falling in and out of tune are placid enough to meditate to though also project a menacing, even premonitory air. Unlike many drone kingdom tape-loop albums, there is also enough substance and subtly here to sharpen your mind against – just when you think you’ve been listening to a stable phrase for 30 seconds you perceive, buried in the glowing embers and vapor, a yawning organ concerto or an analogue gear malfunction rescued into exquisite loop patterning. Over continuous listens a depth of elements continually rise from the initially dark and watery abyss to the grey-scaled and disorienting surface.

This music is as much evocative of the sharp winter cold as it is the mirages of summer heat, the murky deep as much as the smoggy zenith, and the charming mechanics of dusty analogue gear as much as a honed sense of intuitive craftsmanship directed toward allaying arrangements of saturated sonic material. Quartz reads the ambiance of the nether world through the split light of the celestial sphere. So much wickedness and tenderness.

SELECTED PRESS SOON

SMOKEY EMERY - 02 Movement VII (A Craft in Control) - Quartz EP (IQR002)

SMOKEY EMERY - 03 Movement V - Quartz EP (IQR002)

180g LP long sold out - CD (edt. of 500) still available from <http://www.indianqueenrecords.com/iqrecords/releases/silent-land-time-machine-hope-still/" target="blank">Indian Queen Records</a>

From TIME-LAG catalog: “here’s something a bit different… a collaborative release with the band’s own indian queen label. pretty hard to pin this one down, but its a trip for sure. a rather mysterious one man band solo outing from texas, who builds up layer upon layer of violin, viola, acoustic guitar, slippery electric slide, percussion, electronics, accordion, buried vocals, and found sounds into haunted, rollicking, thick sonic blankets of sound. many simple parts entwined, looped, and orchestrated into an undulating whole, like naive bedroom folkrock filtered through some blissed out minimalist phase experiment. ecstatic, post-psychedelic chamber rock maybe? really doesn’t sound like much else out there, but its instantly enjoyable, energized, and grooves freely in its own uplifting way.

packaged in ghostly and subtly beautiful offset printed foldout cover, with foldout insert. 180gm vinyl. limited, numbered edition of 300 copies (CD’s in a tri-fold, double sided, offset printed cover. woven japanese inner sleeves. edition of 500).”

= = = = = = = =
SELECTED PRESS
= = = = = = = =

*&hope still has been featured on the BBC’s Radio 3, the CBC, and WMFU*

“A very solid debut, this one is worth seeking out…” – Almostcool

“One of the more evocative band names in awhile, and with music to match — this one-man act’s rustic loops and collages are a bit like a backwater Panda Bear or Godspeed You Black Emperor, with all the hypnotic, emotive power that suggests.”
- Allmusic Blog

“This is pretty much the most unclassifiable and impossible to pigeonhole piece of music I’ve ever listened to. Layers upon layers of instruments eventually transform these songs into full-on rural outsider barnburning jam sessions. I won’t go on and on about this, as I will only talk in circles about how hard it is to define, but I can tell you that I could not recommend it more enthusiastically. 100% essential.” – OMG Vinyl

“Found noise, static and loops punctuate traditional piano, guitar and wordless choruses, making each song a unique testament to the modern songwriter’s devotion to the real. We hear it’s called chamber folk, and we’re hooked.” – Austinist

“…an excellent effort from Texan one-man band…for an album recorded in a bedroom in the autumn of 2006 and winter of 2007-08, its production values and high level of musicianship and professionalism actually make it rather difficult to critique, except only to endorse it with high praise.” – Foxy Digitalis

“Earthy, realistic optimism seeps out of &hope still with every passing second…While Silent Land Time Machine have control over their sound in &hope still, one can’t help but wonder if this was beginner’s luck, or if the one man show simply is just that good. Only time will show what the case may be, but for now we should be lucky to have such a beautiful release.”
- The Silent Ballet (RIP)

“&hope still is all shades sepia via sound. Built on layers of acoustic instrumentation combined with various audio ghosts and samples, Silent Land Time Machine is a chamber folk orchestra of beautiful construction. Similarly wonderful, is the fact that this “orchestra” has been constructed with only two hands.” – Forest Gospel

Headphone Commute’s “Essentials of 2008”

“…the underlying songforms are highly engaging and the hodgepodge collection of sounds work in such an alchemical way that it all just inexplicably comes together perfectly…we must say it’s one of the most refreshing and unique records we’ve heard in awhile! – Aquarius Records

“&hope still is a really sympathetic record and it has content for many listens to come. This music is fragile yet powerful – it’s something you don’t have to argue about but you feel comfortable being with.” – Noise.Fi

Silent land time machine - 01 everything goes to shit - &hope still (2008)

Silent land time machine - 02 I shouldn't be in school - &hope still (2008)

Silent land time machine - 03 the thing this doesn't mean is nothing - &hope still (2008)

Silent land time machine - 04 the contours of perfect distance - &hope still (2008)

Silent land time machine - 05 electronic transimission(s) - &hope still (2008)

Silent land time machine - 06 down the hill - &hope still (2008)

Silent land time machine - 07 copper pot topography - &hope still (2008)

INDIAN QUEEN RECORDS is an independent record label based in Austin, TX - it is focused on experimental, avant-garde, ambient, abstract, and honest music. IQR was founded by Silent Land Time Machine in 2008. 

Indian Queen Records

Popular tracks