Community Library

Strategy

The Wet Room

Community Library

***For his 20th album, Strategy set out to unite divergent interests into a thematically cohesive set geared equally to headphone immersion or sound system endurance tests. A sequel to the 2015 LP Seeds of Paradise (Idle Hands), The Wet Room starts where that album concludes, both figuratively (a shared perspective from satellite orbit) and literally (playing them in order reveals a seamless continuum). Under the broad umbrella of chill-out—heady, imaginative electronic music that evokes eddies of ecstatic wonder and mystery—The Wet Room unites syrupy bass workouts, generative freeform bubblers, captured freak transmissions, and dubbed-out mixing board sessions into a purposeful, yet liquid, choreography. Strategy’s take on the genre might appear antithetical: uneasy soundbites would seem to be at odds with the gravitational pull to escapism. Strategy weaves these contradictions together and invites listeners to draw their own conclusions. Like all Strategy albums, this merits deep and repeated listening, when those with patience will find themselves rewarded with buried secret messages, nods to lost futures, and sonic ‘easter eggs.'

Steele, Jan And Janet Sherbourne

Distant Saxophones

Community Library

***Jan Steele and Janet Sherbourne gained a reputation for being ambient musicians thanks to their appearance with John Cage on 1976’s Voices And Instruments from Brian Eno’s lofty Obscure series. But in a fascinating catalog spanning more than four decades, these English multi-instrumentalists’ variegated sonic sojourns have proved that label to be far too narrow. In the long-gestating, decades-spanning collection, Distant Saxophones, Steele and Sherbourne flaunt a nuanced vision that encompasses ECM-esque chamber jazz, minimalist modern composition, cinematic soundtracks, and an embryonic, contemplative precursor of postrock.  Important players in the UK’s avant-garde music scene and avid ethnomusicology students since the early ‘70s, saxophonist/flutist/composer Steele and pianist/vocalist Sherbourne showed affinities for neo-classical, gamelan, jazz, experimental pop, the Cuban dance music charanga, and production music. It may be these artists’ very diversity that has sabotaged their ability to gain greater attention in the fickle music business.   Distant Saxophones—many of whose tracks have been re-recorded and improved from their original incarnations—invites you to lean in and bask in an interiorized zone of revelations. These songs simultaneously freeze time and exist outside of it.  Community Library’s anthology is offered in a single LP format with a tracklist more limited than the CD version; the LP’s digital download ticket provides the full music set.

Reanimator

Damaged Bads

Community Library

***In 2006 Community Library released Special Powers, a full length collection of tracks by a mysterious duo called REANIMATOR. Cobbled together from reel-to-reel tapes recorded in Portland in 2000 and rescued from New Orleans on the eve before Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, Special Powers made waves internationally for its fusion of bass driven, saturated electronics, uncompromising experimentalism, improvisational curiosity, and raw power. Reanimator was highly prescient of the ‘noise techno’ idea, and has since become an international phenomenon. Damaged Bads sees Reanimator re-joining a wave they quietly helped to start, with another set of archive recordings providing a window into their world. The polyrhythmic, alien, and basscentric sound of Damaged Bads retains the pummeling drum interplay that won fans to Special Powers. But while their earlier work relies heavily on blown-out distortion, Reanimator introduce gestures that are cleaner, edgier, and more ornate—though still high-impact. Beneath the music’s technological expression, less obvious influences sneak in: the polyrhythmic time signatures of Balkan folk music, the skittering curiosity of free improv, and the irreverence of punk. The results are joyous, confrontational, physical, and cerebral.

Solenoid

Talking Acid

Community Library

***Acid House has proven itself to be resilient to the tides of trendiness. It’s a fixed point of reference in the constantly-evolving spaces of underground dance music. SOLENOI (aka DAVID CHANDLER, aka DJ BROKENWINDOW) offers this sly innovation to the genre: transforming the classic squelch of the TB-303 Bassline generator—the iconic little silver monster that birthed the genre—into a squirming, animalian, almost human-like electronic voice. The experiment originates in a scrapped circuit, found in an abandoned rack of vintage audio electronics. Having successfully revived it (but repackaged into a cigar box, with acorns for knobs!), Solenoid discovered that its filtering effect was strangely well-suited to mutation of the Acid sound. “Talking Acid” was born and is offered to you here as two razor-sharp acid mixes on real 7” wax.