sublamp

08/21/2010 Performance - Plant Vacation at The Hammer

I’ll be performing with Robert Crouch at The Hammer on Saturday August 21st from 3-4pm as part of Machine Project’s Plant Vacation event.

Shiverland Reviews

When Brian Eno invented the ideas of Ambient music (by its very nature, no one could honestly lay claim to inventing Ambient music itself), the key factors were that it could be ignored by the listener, or completely blend into its environment, without losing any of its value. Indeed, for Eno, it was value added if the music did achieve these feats. Of course, there are very obvious pitfalls for a genre thus defined, and all manner of new-age, or thoughtless, or just straight bland dross has been passed as Ambience in the proceeding decades. Sublamp, thankfully, avoids these problems and has offered here, on his new album Shiverland, a peaceful, yet texturally complex wash of sound. Ostensibly a drone based work, Shiverland gives many signposts to its inspiration in the track titles. Pieces such as ‘Lichen Song’, ‘Airsnowtree’, ‘Mountainhead’ and ‘Glimmerspeed’ are indicative, though not merely descriptive. There is a wintryness to the mild distortions fed through cavernous reverbs, though fine details – tape hiss, warm static bursts or machine whirls – sit in the immediate soundspace, not the far-off distance, giving contrasting contextual depth to the spacial elements. Nothing is allowed to drift aimlessly. There is a continual development of ideas and sonorities within each piece and the relatively short track lengths for this type of music assist Sublamp in keeping things sharp and focused. So, while the overall drone-like aesthetic may initially have you thinking this could just be background noise, it is difficult to disengage and treat the music as merely a wash, the details continually drag you back to attention. Indeed, in the end it’s debatable whether this is actually Ambient, by Eno’s definition. Yes, we’ve heard processed drones from Tim Hecker and Fennesz and the likes, but Sublamp has things of his own to add to the aesthetic, which he presents here in an engaging and enjoyable album.
- Cyclic Defrost

After a spate of unseasonably temperate weather here in Boston, the mercury’s finally dipped below freezing and it’s snowing like the dickens — so now is an appropriate time to listen to Shiverland. The album is by a Los Angeles-based musician named Ryan Connor, and, in spite of its title, it is not what one would typically describe as cold. Like Montreal drone artist, Tim Hecker, Connor blankets drifting melodies and pulsating drones in layer upon layer of static and off-white noise that is warm, enveloping, and also rather disquieting. As a rule, Connor’s music is less abrasive and dramatic than Hecker’s. It unfolds and intensifies gradually, as Connor seems focused on creating a distinct, subtly charged atmosphere within each piece. It’s quite lovely, if disquieting listen.
- Rare Frequency

As soon as I heard those whirling, saturated droning layers of sound on the first track new ears new eyes, I knew that Shiverland was a release that couldn’t be ignored. Ryan Connor joins the ranks of an increasing number of sound artists whose compositions are clearly influenced/motivated by the artist’s deep-rooted connection to nature be it topography, climate, life forms, or a combination thereof. Track titles such as Lichenstone, Animalface, Mountainhead, and Airsnowtree attest to this. The eight works comprising Shiverland take the listener deep into the territory of heavily textured ambient drones. This is not the ambient that Brian Eno wrote about in the sense of being background music that can be ignored. Shiverland demands the listener’s attention. Each piece is made up of layers of thick drones, white noise, passing melodies, and the cozy hiss of static which are begging to be culled out and heard. With so many rich details of sound rising above the droning base, there’s too much going on to for the music to be ignorable. Pervasive, warm, harmonious, and robust are good descriptors of the general ambiance here. Artists who music is aesthetically similar to Sublamp would include Tim Hecker and Michael Trommer (Sans Soleil). Even though from the title I expected something chilly and maybe a little uncomfortable, Shiverland is quite the contrary. Listening to it is more like basking in the rays of an early summer sun and being enveloped by the soothing warmth. Those beautiful drones bring about a relaxed mood while the richly textured details caress you and keep your attention.
- EARLabs

Breathletters Reviews

Los Angeles-based Ryan Connor was born in a family of scientists, growing up in environments such as national parks and rocky mountains. This helped him in developing a keen ear in conjunction with the (unfortunately rarely met nowadays) awareness of being a scarcely significant component in the cosmic order of things, which on the one hand limits the typical human tendency to unwarranted egocentrism, and on the other renders the ability of discerning the inner qualities of sounds more enhanced than the norm. The nine tracks of this very nice CD show exactly that, mixing unconscious responsiveness and concentration in static soundscapes among the most satisfying I’ve stumbled upon recently, gifted with unpretentiousness and a wealth of harmonic textures despite the almost complete lack of movement or dynamic shifts. Connor used field recordings and regular instruments to expand the borders of his and our perception, which he seems to achieve without excessive effort. Scenarios that unfold consecutively and naturally, like the succession of nights and days. Obvious, and yet surprising, as the changes in the weather: beautiful to observe and, especially, listen to.
– Temporary Fault

Sezionare le parole per mettere a nudo i fonemi in esse contenuti è un po’ come svelare quei dettagli nascosti nella intrinseca proprietà timbrica di strumenti e attrezzi acustici, per poi manovrare il tutto a piacimento. È quello che fa Ryan Connor, in arte Sublamp, nel trattare il suono armonico alla stregua di un’emotiva forma di comunicazione pre-verbale. In soldoni si tratta di processare il materiale prodotto da chitarra, violino, lastre di metallo, registrazioni sul campo etc. in maniera estenuante, letteralmente di sfibrarlo e deteriorarlo, ridurlo a poco più di ciò che si percepisce come un frullio d’ali o un disorientato gracidio ambient. Operazione nella quale il trentenne autore americano si fa apprezzare per concisione e chiarezza d’idee.
– Blow Up Magazine

Sublamp is Ryan Connor, an LA-based musician whose ‘Breathletters’ attempts to explore, through the electronic processing of various instruments and sources, the concept of sound as a pre-language form of communication. Thus Connor treats guitars, violin, glockenspiel and electric bass in a ‘pre-musical’ manner, allowing tones and extra-musical sounds to gently, haphazardly unfold, arranging them subsequently into pleasant digital streams and pairing them with abstract field recordings. It sits comfortably on Yann Novak’s Dragon’s Eye Recordings label alongside artists Celer and Son of Rose, and is firmly part of the growing field of post clicks n’ cuts producers mixing acoustic sound sources with digital frippery.

The crunch of what sounds like snow underfoot in ‘Echolalic’ is an evocative introduction, and the warm yet creepy subterranean rumblings on ‘Dust Lessons’ recalls Eno’s ‘On Land’, but much of ‘Breathletters’ fails to make an impression. That of course could be the point: the album’s 39 minutes drift effortlessly by, and the lack of demands placed on the listener is often just what’s wanted.
– Cyclic Defrost Magazine

That Los Angeles-based Ryan Connor was raised by scientist parents in national park and rocky mountain settings might begin to explain why his Sublamp material exudes such textural richness. Electronically expanding upon the timbral characteristics of acoustic instruments such as glockenspiel, guitar, violin, electric bass, and hammered metal, the thirty-nine-minute Breathletters weaves nine settings into a tapestry of hypnotic ambiance. Fleshing out the material with field recordings, Connor allows each placid setting to gently flower and then slowly decay as it flows into the one following. The pieces are detailed, meditative drone settings of shape-shifting character, with clearly discernible contrasts emerging as each one appears. In some settings, instruments lose their identifying character—the metallic rivulets that make up “Monophoneme,” for example, are presumably guitar-generated but the sound is abstracted just enough that another instrument could very well be the source—whereas in others the natural sonorities of a particular instrument are audible; in “Like Spiders on the Fox’s Tongue,” for instance, a violin can clearly be heard sawing over an otherwise dense mass. Breathletters impresses as refined on both compositional and production grounds, a quality immediately evident in the opening piece, “Echolalic,” where a meditative gamelan setting is formed from soft percussive rustlings, glimmering bell tones, and faint bass pulses. Elsewhere, industrial reverberations give “Dust Lessons” a metallic character, while the breath-like wheeze of organ tones dominates “Mouseblood.” Another of the album’s strengths is its concision, with the tracks feeling like complete statements despite the fact that they’re no more than three to five minutes in length.
– Textura

Growing up in various national park in the US, Ryan Connor (1979) got an interest in growth & decay and the cognitive abilities & instinct of animals. For his music as Sublamp this interest is used as source of inspiration. Sound as a non-verbal communication source exploring the emotional reactions it provokes.

Breathletters, released on Los Angeles based Dragon’s Eye Recordings, is an exploration into the world of communication by sound without language. Several acoustic instruments are used as source for sound arrangements. In the process binaural field recordings are added to finally result in nine pieces of music.

The pieces fit in well with the tradition of micromusic and minimal music as we know from artists such as Taylor Deupree and Streinbrüchel. Specially the composition and sound color do remind on the last one. Carefully chosen sounds are combined to form emotional droning sounds. In the short pieces (the cd counts just over 39 minutes) the changes are slow. They grow through into the composition and slowly decay again after a short life span. When listened to this music on headphones the binaural recordings add a fine depth to the music making it an experience as if you are in the middle of it. This extra dimension improves the listening experience and giving that little bit extra.

Due to the diverse use of instruments every piece shows its own identity, resulting to a fine album which is not completely new but created with care for detail. I guess that for the fans of micromusic this is an album worth the check out. It’s a welcome addition to the collection.
– Earlabs

Sublamp brings us Breathletters, 9 compositions over two thirds of an hour worth of harmonic and abstract sounds to explore a new form of communication, emotional or ethereal if you will. And in the soundscapes carefully composed out of integral details of acoustic instruments like glockenspiel, organs, guitars, strings and other devices and field recordings, Ryan Connor adeptly puts the listener in a state where you witness traces of this metalanguage of emotion – socalled breathletters that manifest themselves before you without ever becoming tangible. The soundscapes of Sublamp take on both intimate hues and more abstract, hollow characteristics and through growth and decay come in and out of focus. Sometimes one feels like observing something grandiose in the distance without really closing in, yet other times the slow growth rises and you succumb to the monster wave of sound in which details are very evident as the tonal curves reach their momentary peaks.
– Soundscaping

Sublamp’s Breathletters is an extraordinarily beautiful album. Using the idea of the hidden phonemes within organic instruments it sets about expanding on the tones and timbres of the chosen sound sources (glockenspiel, guitar, violin, bowed electric bass and various contact mic recordings) by bringing to the fore the exquisite and sometimes unearthly sounds within. The recordings are structured into nine tracks and, completely contrary to what you might think from the basic idea, it’s simply an album of gorgeous melodic content and wonderfully engaging arrangements. You’ll find yourself hypnotized by the attention to detail in the work with the deepest of textures locking horns with the lightest of tones. It’s a fluid album with subtle changes of atmosphere and mood than range from airy, spacious and gentle through to more robust, lightly drone-based tracks. Add a variety of field recordings into the mix and you end up with a naturalistic and eminently listenable album that’s up there at the top of my list of superb works this year. Dragon’s Eye is on a definite roll at the moment with releases from Clinker, Celer, Jamie Drouin and Lissom. Add Sublamp to that list immediately because this really is a brilliant album and comes highly recommended.
– Smallfish

Sublamp aka Ryan Connor explores the hidden melodies and textures of a set of acoustic instruments [glockenspiel, guitar, violin, bowed electric bass, contact mics on bowed and hammered metal. Furthermore field recordings shape the environmental surroundings of these quiet pieces. This Los Angeles based artist creates a deeply listening that shape expansive landscapes.
– Loop

Los Angelos-based sound artist Ryan Connor uses the Sublamp monikor to craft an airy pastiche of glacially evolving soundscapes in his recent release Breathletters. He presents these conceptual sound works as unwinding sculptural elements, abstract in form, yet suggesting natural, environmental processes. Connor juxtaposes binaural field recordings with recorded acoustic string instruments (violin, guitar, bowed electric bass) and hammered metals via contact mics. His focus is on distilling specific harmonics from dense textures, while allowing the pieces to remain sonically blurred and soft around the edges.

The 9-track limted cdr sets off with the song Echolalic, where foot steps morph into a lovely loop of repeating texture and metallic resonances. Dust Lession fades in slow and remains a distant quiet roar. The majority of the album has a somber tone with quirky track titles such as Mouseblood, Like Spiders on the Fox’s Tongue, and Spitting color. Stars of the Lid are an obvious reference when describing the general mood of Sublamp, however I think Sublamp achieves more with less pomp.

The press sheet references Connor’s interest in”pre-language” and “consciousness without language,” concepts like the instincts of animals. The aptly titled Monophoneme„ explores what might be a simple human vocalisation inside an ambient drone, but it is difficult to discern whether you’re listening to a voice or just layers of harmonic textures. Without the context, the piece stands well alone as an intriguing work but upon repeated listens more elements start to surface. Breathletters has many of these moments, which allow ever more discoveries upon repeated listening.
– Furthernoise