I used to love to go crate digging in record stores, but haven’t done so in a long while. Many stores I frequented are no longer around and I’ve now also drastically curtailed my LP purchases (I’ve never particularly enjoyed flipping through CD bins. It’s just not the same). Instead, these days I often come across online needledrops of obscure LPs, mostly from the 1960s and 70s, but sometimes going back to the 1950s and forward into the 2000s. Perusing such album posts has become my current version of crate digging, or perhaps now it’s more like “virtual digging.” Some fun and fascinating finds have popped up and I thought I’d periodically post reviews of these “virtual digs.”
Perhaps because my last few Virtual Digs considerations were rather blah blues exercises, I found the ambient rumbles of Scant‘s Contrary to Reason to be refreshingly challenging. Scant is the solo project by noise auteur Matt Boettke from Fairfax, Virginia, who is involved in a myriad of experimental groups. This twenty minute EP was originally released on cassette in 2014 (I have no idea where the 69 minute version I found online comes from). Much like the industrial band Sunn O))), Scant takes droning static and manipulates volume, texture and intensity to create a soundscape that is equally soothing and unsettling. I often find this type of music relaxing, even at high volume (especially at high volume). The abundant low frequencies inherent in these recordings physically make the body hum. Visceral muzak? I’d say there is more to it than that, since such work can be quite powerful and emotionally affecting. There is plenty in Contrary to Reason to reward and excite the musically curious listener.
APRIL 26, 2024
Letter to the Vatican 