Barfoot is the recording project of Joshua Barfoot, an experimental musician. His debut release, A Thin Place Between Worlds is a single track EP in much the same vein as Old Earth‘s Lay For June, a continuous song that could be snipped into smaller tracks though is intended to be consumed as a complete whole. However, that the release is one self-contained song does not preclude a great degree of variation, its shifts in style and mood crafted expertly so as to provide seamless segues though markedly distinct from one another.
The lack of breaks or pauses provides a clear through line to the EP, allowing Barfoot to blur the distinction between styles. As such, even the most divergent sounds feel interconnected, any changes feeling not some whim of the artist but a clear progression from what has come before, leaving the listener to probe exactly how and why each development relates to the previous sound. This lends something of a supple nature to the sound, an organic plasticity like that of the mind, where wildly altering thoughts can occur, though a clear path can always be drawn between points.
Which is how haunted drone of the opening can transition into the glitchy electronic continuation, and then into the thin, ghost town echoes of the closing period without any sense of abruptness. Instead, the sonic transformations leave an intuitive impression, some esoteric logic creeping through from a world not quite our own. The description of the release calls the sound “ambient experiments with tape memories. Fragments from a nice old plateau; a thin place between worlds,” and while the sentence might not make much sense before listening, you soon discover it to be the perfect summation of Barfoot’s aesthetic.
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A Thin Place Between Worlds is out now via Canigou Records and you can get it from Bandcamp, including on a limited cassette edition, complete with hand-stamped artwork, and digital.
