Imagine if Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Boards of Canada and Frank Zappa had babies, lots of them. Some babies were charming and chosen, others illegitimate and rotten. They were taken from the sappy rectangles and raised in a forgotten old barn. Some grew into gentlemen, some into crackheads, some into family, some into devices of defiant purpose. They became a ship, right there in the woods, and conjured an ocean into your facehole, politely requesting to populate you with their gorgeous, dechristianized ghost panic.


Trayer's second album “Afterlife an Abandoned Theme park” takes the listener through 17 spaces exhibiting a thick, dichotic textural pallet contrasting hope and darkness, humor and melancholy, speed and quiet; showing us to live while dying. Recorded through lifetimes, across homes and people, from conception to foreclosure and way beyond, "Afterlife..." is separated into three distinct listens.

Part I, Dar Pomorza, the name of a ship found in a deserted scale-model-China theme park, merges primarily heavy, complex electronics with moaning stringed and wind instruments to show a wartime America through the eyes of Trayer's deceased grandfather, a WWII veteran, and the glory that awaits him after death in battle. The turning point of Dar Pomorza is a recording of his grandfather presented as dying in his battlefield dream, underneath a reality of senility and pharmaceuticals, hearing his funeral elegy through his coffin before his ascension.

Syntropy, the second part and centerpiece of the album, is a nineteen minute piece that enjoys the fabled economic boom our Grandparents earned us. Syntropy quilts the contributions of many players into a meticulous ambient electrojazz aftermath of guitars, horns, strings, keys, drums, and vocals, evoking the merging of many people and cultures that we associate the last half-century with. In a subtle nod to the canned '80s, this track was designed to fit the pace and duration of a healthy jog.

Liquidation, Part III, is a funhouse hell where everything went wrong. These are the children that never left the barn; they hated rectangles too much to bargain with them. Wrought by capital, they laugh because they saw it coming. Constructed on a foundation of recordings made in too many ghettofied, desolated, and forgotten spaces, Liquidation reaches the deep, dark, subconscious bottom in chronicling the destruction and decay of home.

Trayer's "Afterlife an Abandoned Theme Park" is a huge, enormously fine-tuned piece of expression with every crevice oozing humanity. It spans the entire psychic range, from the culturally archetypal to the embarrassingly personal. Emotionally rich, uncompromising, and wild, this is music to do everything to.



Trayer "Dissolvi"

Guido Ponzini "Awkward Bear"

Robby Moncrieff "Crooked Teeth"

Nick Rosen "Blues for Albert"

Nick Rosen "See You Again"

Turn On The Sunlight "TURN ON THE SUNLIGHT"

There are / as many worlds / in a life / as there are / lives / in the world“The Gowanus Session”: a new trio recording by Thollem McDonas (piano), William Parker (acoustic bass), Nels Cline (electric guitar), that explores the density and subtlety of tones with reverberating layers of sounds. Thollem McDonas approaches the piano brilliantly, leading the listener to image abstract and beautiful worlds within themselves. William Parker, with his mastery of the acoustic bass, brings warmth to the recording that is complex, soaring and joyful. Nels Cline’s innovative and shape shifting guitar runs the range of identifiable guitar to micro-tonal alien transmissions that act as a solid sound foundation. A pinnacle recording from three master improvisers that reveals new sonic discoveries with each listen.

Porter Records

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