Hausu Mountain – HAUSMO 13
Spread informally across underground networks, learned by hearing and
watching one’s influences in action, possessed of as many unique voices
as artists – the experimental electronic and noise/drone movements
constitute contemporary incarnations of “folk” music, with knobs,
oscillators, and patch cables in the place of acoustic guitars and
harmonicas. As these movements flourish and overlap, the music that
Nelson Bean makes as Black Hat emerges as a bold addition to the
expanding center of the Venn Diagram. As much as Bean participates in
these scenes, performing regularly around his Seattle home and touring
the west coast in the Summer of 2013, electronic music began for him as a
family affair. Growing up in Oakland, CA, the 24-year-old producer
received his first analog drum machines and synths from his father, a
musician-turned-doctor. Supportive friends and family, the right gear,
fierce ambition, and the inspiration gleaned from live shows and the
boundless expanses of the internet: on paper, these seem like a recipe
for a striking project. But Nelson Bean’s music exceeds the sum of the
parts that brought it to life, carving out complex new permutations of
composition and live performance that span the wide spectrum of the
contemporary electronic underground.
Thought of Two, Bean’s first full-length LP, arrives in the wake of his
acclaimed Covalence cassette (Field Hymns, 2013), extending the
compressed, hypnotic styles of that release into three mammoth new
compositions teeming with abstracted rhythms and alien tones. Composed
with an intricate system of digital processes and synth hardware, the
sessions captured here on record represent the culmination of the tonal
explorations and structural decisions that Bean continues to fine-tune
in his improvisation-infused live performances.
On a measure-by-measure basis, Thought of Two confounds listeners’
expectations of resolution and recursion. Its sophisticated rhythmic
grids and detailed lead voices congeal and conflict in unpredictable
fashion, propelling each track through diverse atmospheres and textures.
“Imaginary Friends” begins with a brooding death howl that gives way to
a mind-warping kick drum pattern, all before the machine-drum beatdown
shatters and rebuilds the session from the ground up. “Portrait in
Fluorescent Light” layers washed-out drones and patient effect
manipulations into a narcotic drift that stretches time well beyond the
track’s eight minute running time. The side-long “Memory Triptych”
weaves a yearning synth motif through three distinct emotional spaces: a
burgeoning introduction; the slow burn of the middle passage, led by a
loping bassline and a muffled drum pattern into a matrix of interlocking
pulses; the finale, pitting angelic synth quavers against the rumble of
one last recurring bass phrase. Bean imbues his compositions with the
grotesque cinematic sensibilities and rhythmic experimentation of Coil,
the ghost-in-the-machine humanity of Laurie Spiegel’s computer-based
synthesizer work, and the dark energies and urges of Miles Davis’s
late-period psych-fusion ensembles – to single out just a few
touchstones. Above all, Thought of Two showcases a mind eager to expand
the vocabulary of today’s conflating strains of electronic music,
presenting audacious new ideas with a confidence that demands playback
at maximum volume.
