enmossed - in essence

A Closer Listen

Pisgah Forest, North Carolina’s enmossed label is releasing a pair of intriguing tapes tomorrow; we’ll cover one today and the other on the day of release.

in essence is the sort of tape that shouldn’t exist, and yet it does.  Years from now, someone may find the cassette at a thrift sale, take a chance and be rewarded with a crate digger’s thrill.  It seems like a soundwalk through multiple disciplines at once, a mix tape that isn’t a dance tape, a collage of field recordings, music, poetry and song.  The project began when Chanelle Alessandra “prepared a floral tincture” and sent it a wide variety of artisan and medicinal friends.  Twenty (including two pairs of collaborators) responded, and Glyn Maier mixed the concoction into a mesmerizing miasma of sound.  Alessandra calls it an “affirmation of communion,” a giant living puzzle in which every piece has found its perfect space.

At first there is birdsong, a hint of wind and distant dogs. Marta Núñez Pouzols speaks of “Space Regained.”  Close your eyes; what do you hear?  Her words echo against children at play, chirping crickets, the suggestion of a stream.  Listen to that sound, she invites; but there are so many sounds to listen to; the options seem innumerable.  Chimes and voice seep from a distant wood, an earthly siren cry.  As a new voice enters, the background changes ever-so-slighty, synth tones joining the quiet fray.  One imagines the world’s kindest poetry night, musicians and poets. in tune, working off each other, syllables bowing to notes.  There is space for a guitar solo, then a keyboard.

The seams are invisible, leading one to wonder if certain artists layered their tracks in such a fashion, or if this is Maier’s alchemy.  The curious can find the answers in the download, but this listener prefers the mystery of the mix.  It’s easy to locate one’s place in the track listing ~ Lotta Petronella sings “Somewhere” until her voice is swallowed by a drone ~ but the tincture is of primary importance. The disparate disciplines have more in common than one might think.

Just as Side A seems about to dissolve into crackle, the birds return, coasting upon cloudlike waves of female voice.  This sent us searching for more of White Gourd, which led us to “Teal Sun” from Seasonal Séance: Summer Solstice from Sweet Wreath and its three companion compilations from 2020, something we can’t believe we missed.  This rabbit hole runs deep.

Side B begins with the poetry of Danielle Vogel and ends with a short story from Liz Migliorelli.  The abundance of images, evocative voices, church bells and cricket chirps evoke a magical pub between worlds.  The skies open; a mandolin accompanies a rain forest; a songstress is content to keep her distance.  The piano and children return; or are these other children on a different shore, a different pianist on a different piano?  Again the implication is obvious: we are connected.  One poet speaks of loving God, another of the “cathedral of the sea,” two paths to one destination.

In the final quarter, the music all but disappears.  But at the end of Migliorelli’s holy story, a statue sings for the last time a song once heard in a forest.  The tape wobbles to the end, a heartbeat loop.  We have entered the mystery, and emerged humbled, yet unscathed.  (Richard Allen)