Analog Gems

Snow blanketed the city on Tuesday. It fell at angles that made it hard to look straight ahead, which was ok since eyes were better pointed at the icy sidewalks. Street sounds were cancelled by the cold white drone. Shaken in a snow globe... High-heeled women slid in decelerated arcs, catching themselves just in time and tightening their hoods.

Here's the score...

Bathed in Korg throbs and Moog squiggles, the opening track on Emeralds' new What Happened is a sweeping nod to analog synth maestros like Luc Ferrari and Klaus Schulze. A "headphone track" if there ever was one, "Alive in the Sea of Information" explores the crooks & nannies—pulses & buzzes & twinklings—of the trio's instrumentation (2 synths, 1 gtr) before being subsumed in the second half by an undertow of low-frequency drones, chants, sputters, and analog b(l)eeps & b(l)oops.

There's definitely a krautrock feel to some of it (Cluster, Tangerine Dream, ...), but also some affinity with celestially-minded/circuit-grounded work from minimalist folks like Terry Riley. It's all about modulating waves, wows & flutters, blankets of analog vibrations...

Here's a sea to live in, far from (or hiding within?) the blinding white:



(download)