Review by Jacob An Kittenplan of Cassette Gods
Published September 24, 2019
Blanket Swimming (aka MS’s Nicholas Maloney) is an incredibly dynamic sound artist who employs all your favorite SOTL chops (tonal swells, feedback, low-flying field recordings) and ups the ante by further peppering his compositions with either ominous loops or distant/subtle toasty-souls-of-the-damned wails (tasteful and restrainedly, mind you) for maximum sense-heightening.
“Open Color” feels suspiciously like an expertly-DJ’d "Best of” compilation, as it touches on all of what makes the Ambient-Drone sub-genre (and Histamine Tapes, out of VT, for that matter!) such an engaging, useful resource for both relaxation and focus, depending on your aim and time of day.
Listen to the mesmerizing mix via good headphones for best balanced results!
Published September 24, 2019
Blanket Swimming (aka MS’s Nicholas Maloney) is an incredibly dynamic sound artist who employs all your favorite SOTL chops (tonal swells, feedback, low-flying field recordings) and ups the ante by further peppering his compositions with either ominous loops or distant/subtle toasty-souls-of-the-damned wails (tasteful and restrainedly, mind you) for maximum sense-heightening.
“Open Color” feels suspiciously like an expertly-DJ’d "Best of” compilation, as it touches on all of what makes the Ambient-Drone sub-genre (and Histamine Tapes, out of VT, for that matter!) such an engaging, useful resource for both relaxation and focus, depending on your aim and time of day.
Listen to the mesmerizing mix via good headphones for best balanced results!
Review by TJ Norris of toneshift.net
Open Colour (Histamine Tapes; CS/DL)
Mississippi sound project Blanket Swimming (Nick M.) has just put out their second release on this limited edition cassette (ed of 30) on Vermont’s slow-growing Histamine Tapes. It’s a dusty buzz Western guitar drone, layered with a slow-roasted harmony. Each track, Open Colour pts. 1-5 build on each other nicely in the chasm ‘tween shoegaze and industrial collapse. The is one of those ambient/noise records that often slips through the cracks because of its limited release, and even though this is on the darker side of the spectrum, don’t let it lose the light edge of your eardrums.
WARM DRONES + PEDAL TONES: From the looks of it, this handmade edition even sports multiple options when it comes to cover art, giving it even more of an underground art flair, “with hand cut j cards from Barre Granite Museum brochures.” Once into part three things become rapt with watery field recordings and a dynamic clash between layers, while maintaining a rather low, mostly ambient profile. It’s a stratified, flowing drone that has a scintillating improvisational quality. There are also distant bellowing vocal treatments which are like the ghosts of the Beach Boys’ past.
One thing I find most appealing on this tape is the collage techniques that blend the coherent edit with raw, physical, homemade manifestations. It’s as if I’m meant to hear the musicality while being allowed to see the seams, the process. But like all interesting compositions this only allows snippets to tease you, back and forth, playing on your sense of awareness and lightness of being simultaneously. This set of treatments is most sublime on Open Colour pt.4 – a truly elusive and beautiful work, bathed in erosivity. There are a thousand voices built-in, based on introspection, memory. Finally on part five a forlorn set of drunken strings rise from the ashy drone, eclipsing the mood like a lullaby for the dead. It’s timbre is ambiguous, it’s pace is all forward motion, like a river running dry into the freeze of Winter.
Mississippi sound project Blanket Swimming (Nick M.) has just put out their second release on this limited edition cassette (ed of 30) on Vermont’s slow-growing Histamine Tapes. It’s a dusty buzz Western guitar drone, layered with a slow-roasted harmony. Each track, Open Colour pts. 1-5 build on each other nicely in the chasm ‘tween shoegaze and industrial collapse. The is one of those ambient/noise records that often slips through the cracks because of its limited release, and even though this is on the darker side of the spectrum, don’t let it lose the light edge of your eardrums.
WARM DRONES + PEDAL TONES: From the looks of it, this handmade edition even sports multiple options when it comes to cover art, giving it even more of an underground art flair, “with hand cut j cards from Barre Granite Museum brochures.” Once into part three things become rapt with watery field recordings and a dynamic clash between layers, while maintaining a rather low, mostly ambient profile. It’s a stratified, flowing drone that has a scintillating improvisational quality. There are also distant bellowing vocal treatments which are like the ghosts of the Beach Boys’ past.
One thing I find most appealing on this tape is the collage techniques that blend the coherent edit with raw, physical, homemade manifestations. It’s as if I’m meant to hear the musicality while being allowed to see the seams, the process. But like all interesting compositions this only allows snippets to tease you, back and forth, playing on your sense of awareness and lightness of being simultaneously. This set of treatments is most sublime on Open Colour pt.4 – a truly elusive and beautiful work, bathed in erosivity. There are a thousand voices built-in, based on introspection, memory. Finally on part five a forlorn set of drunken strings rise from the ashy drone, eclipsing the mood like a lullaby for the dead. It’s timbre is ambiguous, it’s pace is all forward motion, like a river running dry into the freeze of Winter.
Review by Stephen Curley of Sailing Stone Records:
Blanket Swimming has the rare talent of straddling both melancholy drones and uplifting melodies which is honed even further on the release, Open Colour. The album’s opening track features a pulsing bed of sound slowly morphing into anxious synths through the track’s two-minute run time. As Open Colour progresses, Blanket Swimming conjures melodic soundscapes exercising the construction/ destruction of stereo drones with found sounds and ethereal vocal loops striking lasting emotional impressions. Nick’s use of field recordings in harmony with instrumental sections results in a dreamlike tug-of-war with the listener’s ears. Open Colour’s masterful closer breathes a sum of emotions found in one thoroughly composed eight-minute track. Blanket Swimming’s control over soundwaves resonates emotionally and subconsciously throughout Open Colour. I have a feeling each revisit of Open Colour will yield a new discovery.
Blanket Swimming has the rare talent of straddling both melancholy drones and uplifting melodies which is honed even further on the release, Open Colour. The album’s opening track features a pulsing bed of sound slowly morphing into anxious synths through the track’s two-minute run time. As Open Colour progresses, Blanket Swimming conjures melodic soundscapes exercising the construction/ destruction of stereo drones with found sounds and ethereal vocal loops striking lasting emotional impressions. Nick’s use of field recordings in harmony with instrumental sections results in a dreamlike tug-of-war with the listener’s ears. Open Colour’s masterful closer breathes a sum of emotions found in one thoroughly composed eight-minute track. Blanket Swimming’s control over soundwaves resonates emotionally and subconsciously throughout Open Colour. I have a feeling each revisit of Open Colour will yield a new discovery.