Review: Spring of Life – Training Camp (self-released, Aug 3)

Spring of Life is one of the more exciting underground projects of the past few years. There’s nothing ostentatious or even particularly “new” about the (I think) Canada-based artist’s work—much of which was recorded at the mysterious Friendship Lodge and self-produced in the form of ultra-limited cassette editions—but the humility of approach and aesthetic. coupled with the elusive magnetism of the music itself, has captured the mind of many a weirdo. 2022’s external label debut Brown Bed was a step up in terms of both focus and structure, and Training Camp keeps climbing that staircase. Housed in a soft poly box and wrapped in an ink-printed plastic shroud, the tape’s contents are as fragile and obscure as its packaging. This is trve tabletop-tinker noise, built on analog burble, electromagnetic interference, the hum and haw of failing cables. It’s an esoteric connection to make, but any fans of UVC or any of the other aliases in the Born Physical Form family (RIP?) will find so much to love here. The A-side suite begins innocuously enough, oh-so-slowly raising complexity from the simplest of seeds. There are no sudden blasts of high-fidelity harsh, no flashy cut-ups or signal-switching, just the steady stumble of cracked electronics wrangled into something halfway useful. You don’t notice the crescendo until it climaxes in a cloud of shards, jagged dust at once crystalline and plasticine. “Educational Practice” kicks in at a louder register, dense and dynamic, but no matter how close they come to resembling direct-action mayhem, the contortions are always feeble, frail, one wrong move away from collapse.