Swamp Horse — Winter Ghost

Winter Ghost is the latest cassette to be released by Handmade Birds, a new label run by R. Loren of Texan post-rockers Pyramids, that in its first year has released new work by the likes of noise connoisseur The Rita and the folksy ambient debut of Preterite to reissuing music from industrial martialists Der Blutharsch and 4AD dream rockers His Name Is Alive. This release features two new compositions from Kentucky’s Josh Lay and Morgan Rankin who together run Husk records, a similarly small label dedicated to the more experimental tributaries flowing out of doom and black metal’s turgid river banks.

Side A’s untitled track introduces its undertow of stretched blackened electronics whose shivering rhythms, despite constantly threatening to lose their stability, carry fizzing synth depth charges as sonorous guitar tones cut through the current. The minimal yet profuse elements steadily merge as the track continues at a doomy pace ultimately joined by wafts of feedback as the journey nears its inevitable break-up on a tide of unsettled emotions.

Side B continues the sense of unease by placing the listener inside a good, old-fashioned slasher horror film as cheap synth keys cycle through a blaring three note dirge, all taught portending violent intrusion, as crickets chirrup outside the empty porch. Onto this revolving haunting backdrop descends a thunderous deep-end drone constantly sinking and roiling until, like the previous track, the sparse elements collapse into each other to form a kind of pulsing drift full of wails and whispers.

Without relying on the maximal affects of multi-layered noise, Lay and Rankin allow their small but effective cargo of sounds and phrases to be washed together as they ship their passengers along into their suitably dark soundworld -  a short theatrical thriller born of limited, but well-balanced, set of noises.