Whether literal or abstract, the imagery of a farm, or specifically that of a barn/stable/shed, is often a grand and pastoral one in atmospheric music (and film; see also Larry Gottheim’s Barn Rushes), a connotation bolstered by the recent surge of “ambient Americana.” But as anyone who’s been inside a ramshackle wooden structure after the sun has begun to go down knows, its interior is often not as romantic as its exterior, instead becoming a space of soggy straw and shadow that seems to whisper your own thoughts back at you. It is here that Hazel Cline sews the seeds of her humble soundscapes on Spell Song: hands rattle forgotten trinkets and ephemera, breeze and breath blow across the chipped rims of glass bottles, soft voice curls in the musty air as both tongues and textures. Apparently “inspired… [by] industrial music and the sound poetry of Kurt Schwitters,” the Atlanta-based multimedia artist’s sublime debut leaves both of those influences in the dust in terms of intrigue and nuance, a distinct sonic dialect all its own growing organically from the humble minimalism of the musical approach. There is an intoxicatingly cryptic essence to these invocations, but not the sort of cryptic that begs to be deciphered—rather, the sort that, instead of simply concealing concrete meaning, abandons it altogether. A nocturnal ritual to some ears, no doubt… perhaps a dusk-swaddled lullaby to others… but to all, a must-listen foray into rural mystique.
Noise Not Music 