Post Moves is the largely solo venture of Sam Wenc, having risen from the ashes of a full band project of the same name. Leaving his home in Portland, Oregon, Wenc looked to “craft a way of making a sustainable and self-sufficient music practice” that could see the project continue without its other members.
Taking composer and pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn as the ultimate inspiration, Wenc set out to make something interesting by himself. He was particularly inspired by Alcorn’s combination of composition and improvisation, what he describes as “a testament to the ability to craft your own orbit within music.”
The first result of this approach was the 2018 album Unison of Motion, a record we wrote about on its release, describing its “strangely meditative vibe that somehow gets to the heart of things, delving into moods and feelings that are otherwise incommunicable.”
This blend of old and new is something stands out on the record. The improvised guitar could come from any decade of the modern era, but the sonic landscapes (crated through synthesized and field recordings) are decidedly twenty-first century. “The thought wasn’t so much ‘how do I make this modern or contemporary,'” Wenc describes, “but more how can I apply a range of tools to reach deeper into how I want to explore sound?”
Wenc plays everything himself, including 6-string guitar, 12-string guitar and pedal steel. Indeed, some of the songs sit at the folk end of the spectrum, like ‘Cerulean’, which puts guitar front and centre with very minimal electronics. So too does closer ‘Cannibalism of Gold’, with its patient unfurling guitar segueing into a rich if ramshackle middle section, feeling warm and earthy and real.
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Although, the traditions of his homeland are not the only thing that influences Wenc’s Post Moves creations. As well as citing the likes of Jack Rose, Bill Orcutt and Alvarius B, he also finds inspiration in Andean Huayno music. “Though the reference points in the guitar playing on No Dignity in Haste may sound quintessentially ‘American’,” he explains, “I thought a lot about the interaction of the stringed instruments in Huayno and it’s ability to create both a melancholic & joyous environment simultaneously.”
‘Axolotl’ is a good example of this juxtaposition, capturing the busy and warped geometry of Ben Zoeller’s cover art before slowing down abruptly around the halfway mark. At this point the song steps through a gateway into a Zen garden of misshapen guitar and a soothing field recording of water. ‘Abiquiú’ too explores uncharted patterns of guitar that spiral outward in propulsive eddies, just one example of many across the album where Wenc embraces an improvisational mindset to create “unencumbered by style, approach, instrumentation, and structure.” It’s a beguiling collection of songs, and one which offers as many questions as answers. Perhaps the most pressing of which being, where will Wenc’s experimentation take him next?
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No Dignity in Haste is out now on Obsolete Staircases and you can get it via the Post Moves Bandcamp page.
