Rocky Mountain High

Feeling the immensity of Radere’s I’ll Make You Quiet, evoking the emotional ambiguity of existential re/dis-location - the wonder and overwhelm-ment of a towering newness while dwelling on the melancholy of a temps perdu. Perhaps...

I'll Make You Quiet by Radere

Kudos to Futuresequence, known mainly among the ambient and experimental community music for their online magazine and mixes, which has come into its own as a label in 2012. Starting with SEQUENCE, a steepling series of (mostly free) download (triple-CD length) comps, numbering 1, 2, 3, featuring a host of the great and the good (and a few of the fairly decent and merely passable) of contemporary ambient, drone, and leftfield electronic -  a litany of names too numerous to enumerate/nominate, it has lately moved to single-artist releases, this from Radere being their first. Programme notes: on moving from Philadelphia to Colorado, he was apparently struck by the intimidating grandeur of the Rocky Mountains, this sense of awe (as in ‘Aww, gee’?) resonating over the vast expanse of I’ll Make You Quiet.

Sometimes, I Can't Make Full Sentences by futuresequence

So anyway, Carl Ritger, as he’s known to his Mum, has previous, not only the aforementioned SEQUENCE1, but also on Rural Colours (Maple Drip), Full Spectrum (A Season in Decline) and Basic Sounds (Lost at Sea, I'm Never Coming Back).

Says Carl: ‘Radere is the primary vehicle for my experiments with sonic ephemera. Inspired by the notions of stasis and chance, I have explored the fusion of acoustic sound sources and digital processing techniques for the better part of the last decade. My work largely avoids synthesis in favor of organic loops and live instrumentation; blurring guitars, cassette recordings and electronics into a densely textured wash of sound, burnished with carefully sculpted distortions and location recordings.’

I'll Make You Quiet departs eloquently from his hitherto long-form textured drones, setting clearly defined boundaries around individual tracks. We learn of the approach he adopts, that he ‘…weaves found sounds into the mix. Recordings of a set of house keys, an electric toothbrush and a tape recording of a flock of crows all make their way into these arrangements, as well as his signature processed guitar and electronics. Each track on the album was recorded primarily in single-take sessions, an intimate approach that reflects Carl's interest with the unpredictable; sounds created out of chance, and an embrace of the temperamental nature of analog tape rather than digitally rendered files.’

Your writer’s first close encounter with Radere was via the monumental, “Good Evening, Ghosts,” a track I liked so much I bought the company (actually, just joshin’, I just stuck it in an albient mix (posted here)



Turns out “Good Evening, Ghosts” forms the base material of a spin-off EP (via bandcamp). Trailer: ‘Before I'll Make You Quiet came Good Evening, Ghosts; a distillation of the album's essence and inspiration, the track became a starting point for what was to come. With a graceful yet mountainous temperament, Radere builds dense swirling patterns of echoing harmonics around surging drones and worn textures. Passing through a series of shifting phrases, Good Evening, Ghosts possesses an air of suspense and wonder within its ambient folds. Such rich material is primed for remix/realignment by other like-minded artists. Benoît Honoré Pioulard, Jannick Schou, Sun Hammer and Anduin expand the unique source, enveloping it within their own approach and style. The result is four distinct artefacts which feel both inherently connected and a departure from Radere's piece. Completing the release is the full length original track, and a track of raw field recordings which forms the basis for much of the tracks on I'll Make You Quiet.’





And a Radere excerpt also nestles snugly in a wooze-tastic albient mix lately posted.

Slings the Wooze by Albient on Mixcloud

All things Radere-related here.

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