Distelfink by chaircrusher

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INTERVIEW
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George Ernst: ​​What're you listening to nowadays? You falling back on old favourites or have you discovered something new that's inspiring you?

Kent Williams aka Chaircrusher: Stipulated that this sounds like I’m being a suck up:, I’ve spent a lot of time with the Time Rival and Belial Pelegrim discographies as of late. A lot of my listening is when I’m writing code for my day job and it’s perfect for that, but there are moments that are so good they distract me from working. I tweeted the other day that a producer who appreciates George Winston and Autechre equally is in the Triplicate wheelhouse. They’re good examples of that.

GE: If each song on the album were an animal, what would they be?

KW: I look for words on the Internet - Word Of The Day sites, translating random words into Tagalog or Hindi - for titles. I don’t have any associations with animals at all.
If I had to choose, I’d say they’re all dogs (or cats), asleep in a sunny spot in the living room. Or what Richard Brautigan described in “In Watermelon Sugar” as a dog-cat animal.

GE: I really loved Checksum. It's one of those hella-long songs like Can's Halleluwah where I wouldn't mind if it were thrice as long. Was it originally much longer? Much shorter? How'd you arrive at 22 minutes?

KW: That track is the second take. The first was 9 minutes. I don’t really experience duration when I’m recording a performance. Making “Checksum” I was fighting a particular effect chain to keep it from going nuts for the whole track, and about 12 minutes in I went ahead and let it go nuts. It took another 10 minutes to end up where it felt finished. It’s exactly as long as it was as I made it, except for trimming silence from the ends.

GE: I didn't hear Goldfinches on Distelfink. I've listened several times, but the birds outside my house are very loud and it's hard to tell what's out the window and what's on the record. Are they actually on there?

KW: The title came from a Pennsylvania Dutch hex design. Hexes are painted on barns to ward off evil spirits, and a Distelfink is a stylized circular sign depicting one or two birds. The birds rarely look much like actual goldfinches. The artist that made the cover, Charles Terhune, was inspired by the Pennsylvania Dutch “Doppelter Distelfink” design. Only he turned the birds into a cross between a pterodactyl and a Red-bellied Paradise Flycatcher.

GE: How many chairs would one have to crush before being politely asked to leave Ikea?

KW: You crush ONE chair & the nickname lasts forever. It was always a dumb name. It’s advantage is that no one else wants it. It’s globally unique on the Internet. It’s always available as a user name.
Life is long and I’ve broken a few chairs. I have been to Ikea twice, and never sat down. Ikea is like Jorge Luis Borges’ story “The Garden Of Forking Paths” only with MDF furniture and meatballs that contain horse meat.

GE: It sounds as though you've been working on this project for a while. Anyone who's spent time on your Bandcamp page will know you're a prolific creator. Do you already have something else in the pipeline?

KW: I have another hour or two of more-or-less finished music that I may put out on a different label or self-release at some point. I make music all the time - not unlike Time Rival - and at this point it’s more a question of not stepping on the Triplicate release. My supply always exceeds demand, so I’m in no hurry. I have an album that’s been on the back burner for nearly 2 years because my collaborator - an old friend I’ve known for over 50 years - is not yet comfortable with having his name on Bandcamp. We’ll see.

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REVIEW
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Behold! The latest and loveliest addition to the formidable Chaircrusher oeuvre. Coming hot off the heels of last November's stunning SWL record, this pretty and enigmatic collection of songs delivers on all the accumulated lofty expectations of its predecessor, and shakes things up in the most delicious way.

Opener 'Palisades' cruises into your field of hearing with a thousand meaningful chimes. It's an effective way to announce to the listener that they're about to take in something rather pretty and ambitious. Dancing moods and micro-melodies scatter and congregate, alternating the atmosphere from intricate and tight, to spacious and sub-ambient.

On 'Adventitious' we're treated to what CC himself refers to as 'Slow Motion Techno'. Not snail's pace-slow, mind. You could still troubleshoot a dance to this infectious head-bopper and not look like a total dingus. It's a smart, extremely layered piece of music that showcases CC's formidable musical plate-spinning talent.

'Fomite' takes things in a drastically different direction. Formidably formless, but not a challenging listen by any means despite the length. There's love and life in these soft howling sine waves. The ghostly aural sighs of musical wolves; foreboding, but overall, rather relaxing.

The pace begins to pick up again on the record's midpoint 'Tangram', wherein the beat re-emerges and takes its rightful place as a CC staple. Brittle and skittery, anchoring a usual but tasty set of notes. Following this is our title track, which apparently is German for 'Goldfinch'! Here you're being treated to another contemplative banger in the vein of 'Fomite', though something about the structure and composition leaves an even sweeter taste than its predecessor.

'Eliane' is a fascinating track, paying homage by name-checking electronic music pioneer Eliane Radique, speaking in a promotional video for a new composition. The power of randomness is truly harnessed here. CC tunes often employ this kind of randomization technique, and indeed, here 8 different sounds are chosen at random to trigger on the

rhythmic grid, skittering and reverb-soaked as they are, and coagulating into a glorious technological treat.

Listening to tracks like the incredible opener 'Palisades', or the mammoth expressionism of 'Checksum', you'd swear CC has gone full Harry Partch and constructed a series of intricate and immaculate hitherto unimagined crystalline instruments to achieve the kaleidoscopic array of sounds found here and about the album.

The closer is a staggering 22-minute sine surf odyssey. white noise passed through multiple modulated filters simulates lapping waves gently caressing the shore, and in this case, your brain. It's a quiet, dreamy piece. If you expected a wild and woolly closer, it's not happening. But what we get is much more rewarding. To quote the man himself:

''People say “it put me to sleep” when they’re bored by a piece of music, but I think that it doesn’t give enough credit to music’s ability to make you feel things. Maybe music that puts you to sleep has a quality that should be celebrated. In a world full of strife, chaos, and impending doom, if a piece is comfortable enough to let you fall asleep, it may be a precious thing''.

Everything you know will soon be forgotten forever.