Genre: Avant-Garde / Experimental / Ambient

Track Listing:

01 Matt Shoemaker - Waning Ataraxia
02 Adam Pacione - Soilbind Morning Glory
03 Jim Haynes - Like A Thief In The Night
04 Keith Berry - Toward The Blue Peninsula
05 Rick Reed - The Fiery Sound Of Light
06 Dale Lloyd - Our Morphosis
07 Colin Andrew Sheffield - For Today
08 Francisco López - Untitled #194
09 James Eck Rippie - Hidden Mirrors
10 Tom Recchion - Drift Tube

‘A Cleansing Ascension’ is the first ever compilation from label Elevator Bath to mark and celebrate ten years of existence and 39 previous releases and it is a conglomeration of mostly new tracks from the roster of artists who release on the Washington-based outfit. Drones and noise, experiments and electronic alchemy, the compilation contours itself with ten sound artists whose work is variegated but at the same time intertwining across seventy plus minutes of dark and light.

The plangency Matt Shoemaker evokes is like a dirge of downed aircraft and the thrumming of the one you sit in, but an ethereal ride oneirically cocooned and languorous, haunting but steady. Senses of ascent are matched by descent as sine tones pitch and yaw. From such occluded visions a dreamlike quality is maintained but propelled away from unease by Adam Pacione’s “Soilbind Morning Glory”, an introspective and muffled symphony subtle in its hulk, warm in its hiss.

The inchoate crumbling and distemper is, however, soon revisited with the guttering endowment of Jim Haynes whose simmering mercurial noise digs a keen earthen tract with mechanical oscillations. As counterweight, the evanescent clouds of Keith Berry’s “Toward the Blue Peninsula” sweeps one back to skies on submerged strings leaden and opaque. More angular and unexpected is Rick Reed’s cyclone of tones swirling like recorded fireflies snapped in homage to some secret deity and it takes Dale Lloyd to drag oneself back to an engulfing maw of deep drones glinting with fluorescence that breath unhealthy exhalations.

There is a brief respite and chance for cleansing in Mr. Sheffield’s shimmering sound before the crashing bulk of Mr. López’ “Untiled #194”, who rattles a voodoo beat with industrial clamour. Semblance of human presence is hinted in “Hidden Mirrors” with looping musical tracts that never quite stretch enough to make sense of, but it is not until the final offering by Tom Recchion that one is grounded as beats calmly reverberate in a chamber swollen in strings and bass.

Fans of experimental noise and drone be forewarned, miss it at your peril. Many of the tracks here are gold and there is a good range of experience to sample Elevator Bath’s intent.

The album is presented in a slipcase digipak of unique design, printed entirely on recycled paper, which is immediately tactile and soft, speckled with the traces of churned and reconstituted efforts. Full colour printing using soy-based inks completes this healthy organic footprint issued in an edition of 650 copies. The soft paper card slipcase interns another that secrets the disc, with a gorgeous type of succulent the only imagery in full colour to grasp your attention.