Expose Your Eyes & Howard Stelzer — One Should Never Cease Considering Human Love, Whi
This rather lengthy titled collaborative release is a long-form example of morphing drone matter, and surreal-to-psych sound/ jam scaping. It’s a CD/ digital release appearing on Oxidation- an Illinois based noise experimental label.
The CD comes presented in a multi-coloured striped four-panel digipack. Inside this features a multicolour static haze, and a dark pink backdrop to where the CD fits. So a simple, though nicely presented presentation which ties into the shifting and morphing soundscapes with-in.
Moving onto discussing the two artists here- and even if you've dipped your sonic toe in the water of the drone/noise underground you’ll know the name, Howard Stelzer. Since the early 1990’s he’s created a large body of work, that has seen him blurred/ blended ambience, layered tape scaping and more subtle/ hazed noisemaking to create a very distinctive and highly respected sound. Expose Your Eyes is the project of West Yorkshire based electronic noise creator Paul Harrison, who has also been active since the mid-’90s with his sound also melding-shifting through noise/ experimental ambient genres.
The single track here rolls in thirty-three minutes. It starts out with hazed and blurred 40’s easy listening, which is slowly but surely engulfed by lapping spacy drone ebb & shift. As we move on the pair expertly blend and morph the layers of sound- with it moving between bass throbbing & gong tolling stuck psych-rock texturing, post- Industrial creak and simmer, mournful/ wonky synth hovers, building tribal ambient meshes afloat with wailing female vocalising, mixes of cinematic ambience and surreal texturing, and more. The pair here have created both a captivating and replayable work, which really does reward closer/ longer dwells, as you become aware of the very skilful blending/ blurring, and layer mixing going on here.
Pretty much anything with the Stelzer name on is well worth picking up, as he’s such a skilful and clever sound maker. I can’t recall hearing any of Mr Harrison work in the past, but there’s no doubt he is equally skilled/ clever. So as a result, One Should Never Cease Considering Human Love, Which Remains as Grisly and Golden as Ever is a most worthy and highly rewardable example of drifting, droning, and morphing soundscaping.