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listen: pillowdiver
watch: youtube
buy: boomkat
Label: under the spire
try: RS

Following a recent entry onto 12k’s hallowed catalogue, Pillowdiver serves up a highly limited three-incher on the dependably good Under The Spire label. Like so many contemporary microsound dronesters, Pillowdiver relies on the electric guitar as a starting point for his miniaturised tonal landscapes, and also like a good many of his contemporaries, the results tend to be more ornamental and ambiguous than they are musically compelling in any traditional sense. The opening recording here, ‘White’ serves as a kind of slow motion, blurred post-rock instrumental that gathers heft once the cumulative effect of electronic processes takes hold. It’s a slightly empty sounding mood-piece held together by all-too simply strummed guitar chords, made more interesting by backwards looping and filtered drone outbursts. You may find yourself wishing that Margraff would either indulge in something a tad more abstract or just get on with the business of playing his guitar in a more wholehearted fashion. Certainly, this is one of those pieces that commits to neither ‘properly’ playing guitar, nor using it more as a signal generator, and the result is a kind of static between-ness. Thankfully, the endless sustain and organ-like transformations of ‘Tony On A Bike’ prove to be more successful, melted into a richer soundscape, and ‘Nine’ – taking the opposite tactic – feels altogether more song-like, steering the guitar into a more Kevin Shields-influenced direction, caked in fiery, overdriven textures. Finally, ‘Black Metal Dream’ closes the mini-album with another carefully poised drone, sounding halfway between the low-frequency pressure of bands like SunnO))) and more pastoral, implicitly melodic works. As usual, there are only 100 of these incirculation, so no dawdling if you’re after one.