With this in mind, the previous releases were ambitious enough, but the latest Nuisance project takes those ideas and pushes them to new heights. Coming next month on Katuktu Collective, triple album SAND, STONE, GLASS follows the template set with Kuchisabishii and Qanisquineq but with the dial twisted to eleven. “SAND, STONE, GLASS is an album that was recorded before it was written,” the band explain. “Selected instruments were deeply sampled then coded and designed into a series of 31 virtual instruments by the artist(s) and used exclusively in the making of the record(s).”

Nuisance left no stone unturned when collecting these instruments. They include everything from a refurbished abandoned felted piano and heirloom oud, to a vintage home organ borrowed from Facebook marketplace and synths crafted from experimental found sounds. But the expanded library was only the beginning of the project’s vision. Because just as Scott Robert Allen and Eric Osterman reimagined songs from Kuchisabishii to make the Qanisquineq EP, the triple album invites the collaborators to make two entirely new records from the nineteen songs of the first. The result is essentially three variants of the same album: SAND, STONE, GLASS.

Lead single ‘Sepia’ gives a view into how this plays out. The SAND version of the track is what Nuisance describe as “indie folk meets bedroom pop with a pinch of doo wop,” its acoustic washes drawing the listener into rich world of ambient textures, piano and organ beats. But the STONE variant favours a starker ambient style, the acoustic elements stripped out and replaced with a sense of space, while the GLASS offering leans much further toward the piano, maintaining the expansive atmosphere of its predecessor but offering a fonder, poignant tone.

SAND, STONE, GLASS will be released on 3rd March via Katuktu Collective. You can listen to all three iterations of ‘Sepia’ and ‘Davenport’ now via the Nuisance Bandcamp page.

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Tracklisting:

Frog – American
The Phone Booth – Ballad of Indifference
Spielbergs – 4AM
Neurotic Fiction – Collateral
Neighborhood of Make Believe – Track Names
Pizzagirl – body part
Orchid Mantis – porch song
Gorgeous Bully – patience
Reighnbeau – Trading Heat
Troy Everett – Absent
Amparo – Hounds
REW<< – Victoire Impossible
Okay Embrace – Moving
Young Jesus – For Nana
Vender & The Cobras – Everything is Beautiful
The Lostines – Faith in Love
Haley Heynderickx & Max García Conover – Little Wind
Rivulets – Everything Goes
Balto – Bullshit Dream
Meat Wave – That’s Alright
Docks – Kiosk
Satanic Ritual Abuse – Hurting (Adjective/Verb)
SATU – Growing Up
Anna Tivel – Fenceline
Madison Turner – Richmond, Virgina
Elly Swope – 6.8
Nathan Ball – All or Nothing
Monarch Mtn – canyon blues
Stripmall Ballads – You Were Good (I Was Good For a While)
Katie Mullins – Crocuses
Lisa/Liza – Tea Kettle
free cake for every creature – shake it out
Katy Kirby – Tap Twice
Lung Cycles – hottest day of the year so far (4pm version)

You can find all of our Monthly Roundup playlists here, and peruse a wider range of mixtapes that we’ve put together over the years.

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The recording moniker of Weber’s solo work, REW<< has itself been the vehicle for a number of styles and sounds, with Weber’s solo visions as experimental and ambitious as any of his partnerships. Recorded in a series of hotel rooms across much of Asia, Departeures offered a subtropical and reflective slice of dream pop, while 2015’s Olive Skinned, Silver Tongued Sirens Sing Swan Songs pushed into neo-classical territory. Still, the latter employed pop sensibilities to counter the classical vibe, making for a record that blurred the distinction between avant garde experimentalism and accessible pop.

New album Les Racines Parmi Les Sabots Des Chevaux is another direction for the REW<< sound, with Weber shedding the pop aspects in favour of a pure neo-classical aesthetic. Centring the piano as the driving force, the record is a lesson in minimalism, at least when contrasted with REW<<‘s previous releases, dropping much of the dressing in favour of stark emotion. This is typified in the album’s opener ‘Victoire Impossible,’ the tone somewhere between pensive and sparkling, or perhaps both at once—concerned with the quiet beauty of things, and the process of elevating such appreciation into our everyday lives.

The joyous finale of the opener sets the tone for the record, with tracks such as ‘Ralentissement Debout’, ‘Monde Magique et Solitaire’ and ‘Attraper un Aperçu de la Femme de la Peinture’ all finding different ways to bloom into deeper life from their minimal beginnings. Which is not to say that Weber is not equally adept at pure restraint, as highlighted by the sombre tones of ‘Équilibre’ and field recording textures of ‘Volière d’Oiseaux Sans Vol,’ but it’s clear that his tendency with this record leans toward the transcendent climax.

Les Racines Parmi Les Sabots Des Chevaux is out now and you can get it from the REW<< Bandcamp page.

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“neo-classical… draws on a wide range of styles and genres to create a surreal, cinematic slice of orchestral pop”

Now the album has been released and I’m glad to say it follows this same blueprint. Opener ‘Big Fish And The Sirens’ is a perfect example of this. The first thirty seconds unfold as a luscious, intricate instrumental before Weber’s vocals arrive and transform the track into a pop song. But just as his vocals take centre-stage and you think you have it pegged, the music responds accordingly, swelling once more so that Weber’s voice is reduced to just another element of a brilliant whole. The song barely reaches the 2:20 mark, yet by the time the music recedes to leave sirens traversing the silence, you feel in the aftermath of something important and on the verge of a larger burst of activity.

As we mentioned in other REW<< and Eric & Magill posts, Weber draws inspiration from across the globe, utilising an array of distinctive sounds side by side to create something akin to the multicultural world in which we live. ‘To Come Unglued’ opens with air-raid siren synths which morph quickly into an Eastern jaunt before the drums and vocals of Western pop kick in. The title track is similarly diverse, a collision of Bollywood and Hollywood scores with the slow, atmospheric percussion of a post-rock anthem. ‘The Lights in the Sands of Katumpkale’ is the soundtrack to a different cinematic world entirely, one where unknown Europeans committed weird to tape, while ‘Cupid’s Empty House’ is a grand dream-pop song, and ‘Swan’s Melody’ is piano-led and melancholic, full of lingering moments and gravid empty spaces.

If this variety sounds jarring then that’s because it is. Weber does not knit all the elements into a seamless whole but rather plays with order and explores the joins, in doing so creating music which addresses our fragmented, postmodern existence. His biggest achievement is managing to assemble the pieces into something listenable for all of it’s idiosyncrasies, with the pop elements acting as a string to follow into the unfamiliar territories beyond.

Olive Skinned, Silver Tongued Sirens Sing Swan Songs is out now on Hidden Shoal. You can buy it from Bandcamp.

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Tracklisting:

1. A Lingering – German Error Message
2. All You’ve Gotta be When You’re 23 – Free Cake For Every Creature
3. Can You Feel It, Too? – Fun Home
4. Garden Tomb – Pasture Dog
5. How Marvelous – Lewtrakimou
6. Out Names – Shunkan
7. Floral Mattress – Naps
8. Rapture in Heat – Liam Betson
9. Astoria – Gwenno
10. Electric Duck – Henry Demos
11. Angharad – Yucatan
12. Orchids (Instrumental) – Celebrity Crush
13. Tulsa – John Statz
14. Snow – Alanna McArdle
15. Yours Till the Ocean – Danielle Fricke
16. The Lights in the Sands of Katumpkale – REW<<

April 2015 Roundup from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

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‘The Lights in the Sands of Katumpkale’ is a short neo-classical track that draws on a wide range of styles and genres to create a surreal, cinematic slice of orchestral pop. Lable Hidden Shoal describe the song as “a window into Ryan E. Weber’s kaleidoscopic musical universe,” which seems more than apt. You can grab it for free right now over at Bandcamp.

Not content with the intricate track, Weber teamed up with Megan Olinger Sweeting to shoot an accompanying video which certainly ups the intrigue. Focusing on the strange movements of various body parts, the video is what my uneducated self would label Lynchian, although I’m sure those who enjoy avant-garde cinema would know of a few better examples. Whatever the influences, the whole thing is shot on Super 8 and transferred to VHS, giving that mysterious/creepy/slightly seedy feel of 70s/80s arthouse flicks. Watch it below:

The album will be released on Hidden Shoal the 16th July.

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Miss last month’s edition? Listen to our January round-up.

February Mix from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

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When you hear the story of the recording process, the tropical sound isn’t surprising. Amazingly, Departeures was recorded in hotel rooms and train compartments across Kenya, India, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Indonesia, all within a few months in 2013. If the wet/snowy weather is getting to you, put Departeures on your headphones and remember that it’s always summer somewhere in the world.

The album is available on a pay-what-you-can basis over at the REW<<  Bandcamp.

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