Edward Sol — Motels & Cupids

This fiftieth release from Kiev’s Quasi Pop label, which has recently seen releases by Andrew Liles, Lasse Marhaug and Merzbow on its expansive and eclectic roster, is from label owner Edward Sol. Although he seems to have worked extensively with various Ukraine-based groups in the rock and electronic mould (most visibly in Biblioteka Prospero), his training as a sound designer for film and television seems to have come to the fore more recently on his solo releases where he fuses Foley with field recordings to create concrète dramas of which this 30 minute cassette is no exception.

With ‘Motels & Cupids’ Sol aspires to evoke the range of disoriented feelings brought on by waking up in unfamiliar places, be it a short stay in a motel or the equally unfamiliar bed of a new partner. Side one of this 30 minute cassette has just the one extended piece, ‘Away From The Places We’ve Been Happy’, that takes a spare, isolated roomy ambience replete with loose movements and fragmentary voices of nearby tenants and over scores them with abstract elektronische from disintegrating buzzes and silver rushes to varispeed tape squeals and radiophonic sci-fi bloopery. It’s an odd combination that feels largely aleatoric in execution to such an extent that the non-documentary sounds of the electronics bear little relation to the real, otherwise evocative sounds of the room they overshadow, making the piece feel more like waking up in an alarming alien dimension than to the subtleties of an alien room.

Side two is shared by two shorter pieces, both of which stimulate more realistic reflections on rising away from home. ‘New Morning’ describes exactly that as a radio alarm clock broadcasts an old time Neapolitan operatic number for several minutes before being turned off abruptly to reveal the rush of air carrying birdsong from the balcony as strangers move beneath in the alleyway. The confusingly-titled ‘Old Shoes’ sees a more effective combination of electronic sounds and field recordings to the first side. It opens with a background of stealthy echoes of industrial clanging over a muted layer of air in the midground while what sounds like small licks and lip smacks punctuate the fore ground to great, mysterious effect. The sci fi trills of side A gradually return but this time are not allowed to smother the creaking floorboards or light footsteps until a creeping Throbbing Gristle-styled synth lopes along to a dripping tap to create a genuine sense of apprehension of another’s abode.