golden brown ~ weird choices (inner islands, 2023)
“Weird Choices”, Stefan Beck’s third release with Inner Islands as
Golden Brown, sees Beck taking decidedly different approaches from last
year’s “Luminous”. Whereas “Luminous” featured a very guitar-centric
palette, these new pieces focus on augmenting the familiar guitars with
keys, synths, and electronics in favor of more spacey compositions.
These tracks also grew out of experiments with compositional duration as
Beck elaborates, “I started a practice of making these miniatures - one
to two minute long songs that still felt fully formed and expressive
but simple and concise.” Glass Frog, Larvae, Worm Charming, Milton
Banana, and Busted Crystal were all realized under that intention.
The longer pieces feature some of the familiar fingerstyle and slide
guitar that listeners to Beck’s previous work may be acquainted with.
These pieces, by and large, are layered improvisations that conjure
floating moods, untether to the terrestrial. The final piece,
Olas/Ondas, features a similar approach to the tracks on “Luminous” by
using field recordings as a springboard for further extemporizations
based on the feel and events of that space. In this case Beck used
recordings from a trip to Anini Beach in Kauai to influence the gently cascading piece.
The novel “The Actual Star” by Monica Byrne played a significant role in
shaping the mental images and mood that Beck was feeling while
recording the album. Beck explains, “part of the book takes place in a
future where society collapsed from climate change and had to be
adapted/reformed by those who survive. The way they live in that future
is through near constant global migration, stopping in refuges along the
way for shorter periods of time. It sounds kind of bleak but is
actually a more hopeful vision of the future than what our current
trajectory looks like.” And related to these ideas of possible imminent
futures, the title of the album acknowledges our present; he says it
encapsulates “all the maddening aspects of daily life in the last few
years that we have to process and compartmentalize just to go about our
daily business. Do I choose to go about my day like normal in spite of
the ongoing escalating climate crisis? How do I respond in my daily life
to the erosion of our civil rights and rising fascism? Do I see my
loved ones in spite of an ongoing pandemic? I guess the phrase just kind
of stuck with me as we have come to accept as normal circumstances that
are anything but.”
...y hablando de günter schlienz y de sellos que para nuestra felicidad siguen incansables editando discos, he aquí la nueva cinta de cassette de golden brown (en realidad hay un disco todavía más reciente también editado en Inner Islands) que, sin abandonar su guitarra acústica (mucho más presente en el preciosísimo wide ranging wider) es como si emprendiese la senda modular de günter schlienz ('glass frog'!). o a lo mejor es que siempre estuvo ahí, escondido entre las olas y las grabaciones de campo al estilo 'wave temples' o x.y.r. hoy me invade la nostalgia, pienso en aquellos tiempos en que no perdíamos de vista ninguna de las cintas editadas en inner islands, o cuando aterrizó en mi correo uno de los primeros discos de golden brown y no daba crédito a que un disco tan sencillo y tan bonito llegase a mí como caído del cielo. al final, casi siempre, todo está unido, sellos y grupos revoloteando en un mismo micro universo. 'weird choices' es bruce langhorne, es james blackshaw, es cosmic winnetou, hasta incluso es 'sea bed meditation' ('milton banana'). library music meets jack rose. podría haber hablado de cualquier otro de sus discos, pero esta portada marrón café me enamoró al instante y no me equivocaba, lo que hay dentro es un tesoro. y si no, escuchad 'olas/ondas'. no imagino mejor epílogo...en rotación eterna (qué a gusto se está ahí y qué frío cuando se acaba).
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