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2LP
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OUEST 094LP
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11 Items is the textured first album by Pontiac Streator and Ulla Straus for Huerco S and his pals at West Mineral Ltd. The album sees the American duo expand upon the hazy mindset of their Chat EP (OUEST 097LP, 2018) across a flux of ambient interzones where they transmute fleeting, everyday feels into a bouquet of ephemeral and organically unresolved scenes The expanded double-LP palette of Streator & Straus' second release reveals a greater variegation of their overgrown, verdant electronics and free rhythms in a gently perplexing style of ambient inception. Each of the 11 Items feels like an exploration of dreams within dreams in a way that beautifully parses the poetic from the prosaic and cannily reflects a certain hyperaware yet hypnagogic state of modern ambient music. Recorded at 50 Wingz in Philadelphia, 11 Items convects a cool, communal sort of psychedelia from nose to tail, evoking the feel of friends in a room or a cabin communicating non-verbally. In the process it conjures the type of moments that lead to comfortable silences between familiar souls, and likewise has the capacity to stimulate and dissolve conversation with the babbling, forgot-what-I-was-talking-about flow and quality of MDMA chat between relaxed but frayed and buzzing minds. In an ambiguous style that has become key to West Mineral Ltd.'s aesthetic, the music is neither gloomy nor ecstatic but full of transitory sensations somewhere in between those poles. Each part feels pulled in multiple directions at once, resulting in a sublime schism between jazzy hustle and heavy-lidded electronics in "Item 1", and a subtle underlying tension between layered dimensions of humid, dusky acoustics and congealed electronics on "Item 3", while "Item 5" dices with urges to dance/lean back, and "Item 10" crystallizes this idea of alchemic multi-valency with an unmissable mix of fine grained mentasms firing like synaptic surges in iridescent grey matter. Mastered and cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Edition of 500.
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LP
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OUEST 097LP
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Brian Leeds's (Huerco S) West Mineral label present a groggy Midwestern ambient doozy with Chat, the first collaborative release by Pontiac Streator and Ulla Straus. Pontiac Streator previously appeared as a guest on the first West Mineral LTD release, Pendant's Make Me Know You Sweet, while Ulla Straus is perhaps best known for her part on the cultishly adored bblisss compilation tape (2016) which introduced Huerco S's Pendant alias to the world at large. Their first album together is a bedroom-crafted confection where drowsy blues and raga smudge with lounging exotica themes in a blunted style to properly heavy-lidded effect. Chat was recorded on July 5th in Pilsen, Chicago on Ulla's bed after a long week spent dancing with friends, staying up all night, typing in chat rooms, and hate-watching Fox News. The results channel that experience into four lop-sided creations that feel satisfyingly burned out and immersive, like the murmur of zonked chat between close friends. In four parts -- "Chat One" through "Chat Four" -- the record unfurls with a muggy mid-fi tension between its illusive fidelities, kindling a smoky atmosphere that colors listening spaces with seductive smells and a muggy, keening tension that recalls the minutes before sundown. This balmy feel of the surreal comes out in a sylvan patina of sweetened cicadas and curling pads urged along by a stream of wooden drums, variously recalling Spencer Clarkon some kind of Aguirre soundtrack mission in the tropics, a heat-sick Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement piece, or, in the dream-pop drift of the last part, like Leven Signs smudged by Muslimgauze. Coolly serving to expand West Mineral LTD's remit after that spellbinding Pendant album and a 12" of ectoplasmic dubs from uon, the flux of arid/fluid textures and para-dimensional fidelities in Chat feels somehow calming yet fraught with a dangerously somnambulant appeal.
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