Stormhat
Brown Acid
USA LOVE EARTH MUSIC LEM365 CD (2024)
This is Peter Bach Nicolaisen dit Stormhat and he sent this item from Denmark.
After years of providing the world with serviceable drone-process music (electronics mixed with field recordings) this fellow scaled new heights with his Mind Matter double cassette of odd audio episodes. Today’s CD item is equally episodic and – like the title seems to be implying, with its hints of a lysergic drug or a disastrous LSD trip – might be aiming at a low-grade surrealism or an array of hallucinatory images, albeit in a cheerful and upbeat way. I’m sure there are more than enough records which chronicle the darker side of the acid experience, but Stormhat is seizing the opportunity to make a more creative statement. Nicolaisen himself declares he’s aiming to “punch small holes in the prosaic reality of everyday life”.
This is quite an unorthodox take on the field-recording genre, 90% of whose proponents are aiming to preserve that prosaic life, putting it in a contextual frame of audio; and many of them would stop far short of saying it’s “prosaic”. But the utterance also reflects the changes, or more accurately the juxtapositions and contrasts, that Stormhat delivers in his work: we’re hearing simple synth sounds simultaneously with the sounds of weather, water, and air, and the multiple layers are skilfully aligned for maximal dynamics and unexpected surprises. It’s all good, but fave cut might be ‘Teenage Repellent’, and I can see myself using its harsh and abrasive tones to dispel many a mob of arrogant youngsters in my area. (27/11/2024)