One of several promising artists emerging from a wave of new blood in the DMV-area scene, Will Graham’s adventurous solo project Vasterian is still in the process of defining his sound. His first tape Static Dreams employed heavy use of radio to conjure a sputtering soundscape full of dead air and hiss, a stark contrast to the inaugural live set I saw him play earlier this year that consisted of bracing, bellowing power electronics. Though his output thus far doesn’t display a consistent style (far from a bad thing, to be sure), there’s certainly a consistent level of intent and execution. Brand new C44 Turn Around plays like an attempt to flesh out the middle ground between the disparate extremes of the debut release and performance, and a successful attempt at that. Graham structures the two sides around texture shifts between the garbled warbles of intercepted transmissions and the screech of analog feedback, opting for a patient freeform progression with plenty of room to breathe. The A-spanning “On Plummer’s Island” [sic] blooms slowly and steadily, with wounded, barely legible speech giving way to oscillating static rent with high-frequency slice ‘n dice. When the track hits its peak it’s thrilling, so howling and unstable that it feels like the tape is going to burn right through your deck. The facing pair of the title cut and “Tracing the Spiral / Smooth Character” are more pensive. Both feel fragile and vulnerable in their raw simplicity, especially when Graham flips on the vocal mic at the end of the latter and lays down some agonized shouts over a seething mass of minor harmony, a more elegiac take on the cathartic aggression found in his work as Comfort & Critique. It’s a strong and haunting conclusion that offers a late anchor to the preceding potpourri and pays off the snatches of vocals heard throughout. Turn Around may have worked better as, say, a C30 (“On Plummer’s Island” especially starts to drag toward the end) and gets a bit bogged down by its own eclecticism, the abundance of creativity and passion make it memorable—and replayable.
Copies are available from the label via email: landscapesuicideproductions@gmail.com.
