No Paris — Past Decussations

No Paris is the minimalist electronic project of Sean Gray from Fan Death Records. This release comes to us on City of Dirt and follows up their debut, Cimmerian, from earlier this year (which is on Gray's Accidental Guest Recordings).  Past Decussations is both more sparse and more harsh than the previous effort, as odd as that sounds, and a worthy follow up.

For the longest time, I found that most minimal releases struck me as lazy ("Where are your layers and density?" "Nah, man, it's minimalist."). I had approached it from a completely different side where thickness and density of sound rules the school, so the sparseness was alien to me. I've been coming around, though, and been trying to appreciate it for what it is. It works for me more than it has in the past, but still not enough for me to get into it fully. It took me a while to get into this album, and I'm not sure I'm even truly there. For all the plusses on each song, I find a minus. The opener, "Forged Words," is three minutes of shifting delayed synth notes with kick drums every so often. While the tones are nice and reminiscent of the C64 and John Carpenter scores, there just isn't enough going on. And for some reason, it's the longest 3:14 I've ever experienced. I like the track enough, but it has a way of slowing down time. Impressive, but when I'm at work, I need a song to do the opposite. "Constraints" definitely has at least one constraint: take your time. This one takes a while to get where it's going, but it's a pretty nice ride. Less minimal and more ambient, "Constraints" has long, oscillating drones where "Forged Words" has space. They work well together. "Outcome For You" dives into some unexpected territory. The opening distorted synth interplay borders on power electronics territory and continues to thicken and roughen through most of the 3:34 run time. The high, oscillating, delayed feeback at the end is well controlled and works very well against the low, crunchy synths.

Less minimal than expected, Past Decussations takes it full circle. What starts off sparse and spartan ends up full and textured. The brevity of the tape (15m) adds to its appeal as anything shorter wouldn't have had the time to make the journey and anything longer would've lost the point. I liked it enough to check out the first tape (digitally, thankfully. Lousy hipsters and their tapes...ugh, da woist!) and would probably stream the next one as well. Past Decussations is a nice fifteen minutes, but still feels like it's missing something.