Cerberus Vol.3(21)
Featuring Arian Shafiee, Claire Rousay + More Eaze, Devin Shaffer, Matt Christensen, kinoue64
Music is healing. And we need those bandages and ice packs of hope right now, however small, and temporary. In the past couple of weeks, these are some of the albums I’ve turned to that have made me happier, more contemplative, and empathetic to my surroundings.
It likely hasn’t helped my psyche that I’ve been reading Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford (a fellow Ball State alum) and wrapping my head around her circumstances, tragedies, and triumphs. It’s a great, but heavy read. I recommend working through it slowly because there are parts — especially if you grew up impoverished and with parental issues (like me) — that will likely speak across some of the divides.
Arian Shafiee — Pastorale
For a person whose social media nom de plume is “riffmaster123”, you’d expect the Guerilla Toss guitarist to shred some gnar on this solo outage.
If ambient works can shred, then Pastorale is a cat’s stretching claws kneading into a well-worn chair. Shafiee’s approach to guitar on this lush compositional work (which also features some familiar friends) is to explore subtlety. In this case, being patient and subdued is an inspired take on shredding — like the cat waiting to meet your gaze before performing its act of defiance and attention seeking. This is the sound of “California Pastorale” with Claire Rousay providing the sounds and ideas that break up Shafiee’s plush upholstery.
With the same combination of grace and killer instinct, Shafiee waits to pounce on unsuspecting listeners with sharp claws and nimble fangs. “Hard Pass” ticks steadily like the Grandfather clock in the corner, with the gleaming of a cat stalking a lone mouse running up and down its frame. Shafiee’s balance of a sweeping melody and the incessant clipping counting down until zero hour demonstrates his ability to force movement but also his restraint in maintaining particular parameters about just how fast things move.
Follow-up “Wembley” is a favorite. Shafiee’s ability to create comforting ambient melodies makes the music feel classical, almost pop-ish in its familiarity. There’s a reason the old reliable chair, nearly worn to its padding and stuffing, still has a place in the household. Not only is it the favored scratching post of the feline, but it’s also a place where one can sit and feel the rapture of enveloping warmth and peace. Pastorale is most definitely a well-worn chair, and with each layer striped away, a new nuance and pleasure is found.
Claire Rousay + More Eaze — An Afternoon Whine
The pairing of Claire and Mari is one that makes my heart go aflutter. Both speak to an energized ennui that we all endure during our daily routines. Yet, their separate insights combining into a singular musical perspective provide a creative spark that renews the spirit. It’s easier to navigate the ordinary when you realize just how weird it truly is.
The sparks of intersectionality within An Afternoon Whine (including its pun-ful title) are wholesome. Conversations collide with found sounds, everyday noises, and subtle pop strains of faint vocals and instrumentation. “Smaller Pools” is the track I gravitate toward most, with its Fennesz-like electronic sweeps and strummed guitar, interspersed by what sounds like someone rummaging around in a kitchen, perhaps cooking a meal. Maybe it speaks to my own household experience, as I prepare dinner, sometimes listening to music while my children watch cartoons or play outside, my wife finishes her workday, and there’s a general bustling around the neighborhood as it begins to settle into the evening hours.
“Songs for a Tuned Guitar” functions similarly, with a din of disparate noises finally coming together around the titular instrument, before formalizing into a suite of strings and light conversation.
All of it is noise, and all of it is music. Our daily lives are surrounded by sound, and those sounds have meanings beyond what’s obvious. Mari and Claire capture that essence of being, of living, and allow it to be musically mercurial.
kinoue64 — 生きている
The mysterious kinoue64 is one of my favorite discoveries over the past couple of years. The work is always a blast of shoegaze frenzy that is just this side of the genre’s 1990s heyday. With 生きている, there is now a bigger focus on vocaloid thrown into the mix. And while the electronic voice nodes may make a certain generation flashback to Trans, the idea of distorted and contorted vocal effects have come a long way. For example, “壊”, where the digitized vocals are lilting and dreamy. They counter the driving, crunchy melodies that continue to grow more hectic, yet refined throughout 生きている.
Matt Christensen — Red Trails
Another Cerberus column, another Christensen release. I’m just sorry I can’t cover them all, but that’s the fun for you — the dear reader — to go and check on Christensen’s monthly drops yourself.
And it’s worthwhile. Christensen continues to inhabit a landscape that is the party of one. His sparseness resembles a lot of the bands that came out of Dunedin in the 80s and 90s, exploring the spaciousness and faintness of the afterglow. But there’s something else going on with Christensen’s work of late— a bluesy soul that must come naturally from residing in and around Chicago.
Much of Side A of Red Trails spends time with this rustic, wholesome feeling of loneliness as a totem. It’s the hallmark of side closer “A Shock to the Eyes”. Side B gets wider open and thoughtful but maintains a Midwestern subduedness that is a hallmark of living in the heartland. Christensen balances a lot of musical ideologies with adeptness and a keen sensibility about mood and message. No matter the locale of his inspiration, they all bleed into his ability to tell a plaintive story but make it captivating.
Devin Shaffer — In My Dreams I’m There
The isolation of “Drive Into Woods” is palpable. It sets the dichotomy of Shaffer’s music: eerie, yet hopeful. As she asks someone unknown to repeatedly “Comfort me” — perhaps even calling to the trees as she passes by them in the midst of an ambient bass drone that sounds like a car slowly driving into a dense wooded area — it’s a staggering, blanketing message of reassurance.
This blend of folkish storytelling and melodies mixed with glacial, enveloping ambient accompaniment is the essence of In My Dreams I’m There. I’ve been guilty (along with others) of overusing “ethereal” as a description of this sort of blended music, but Shaffer is truly the master and ruler of this enchanting feeling. Her voice is ghostly, passing through the mighty oaks and towering redwoods of her steely guitar and brick wall drones with ease. Despite the spectral qualities of the album, there’s a very human warmth. “Carina Searches for Hollow Rock, North Carolina” and “Heavy Baby” capture moments of reality, which break up the dreams of Shaffer’s compositions surrounding them. By buoying the album in this way: juxtaposing delicate folk and drone songs with these recordings of life and conversation, In My Dreams I’m There is almost cinematic, recreating an aura of flashbacks through the narrative of a tracklist, complete with the clicks of bicycle wheels, knocking rocks, and human dialogue.
Shaffer calls herself a “chronic daydreamer” and that could not be more evident throughout In My Dreams I’m There. And it’s a pull I have as well — I find myself daydreaming through life, but rather than it eclipsing reality, it subtly blends with it to create what amounts of an idyllic version of a life slightly interrupted. I am under the spell of “Taste You with My Mouth Closed”, half-lost in the remembrances of first meeting my wife, the spark and butterflies of those moments, and then cajoled awake by the radio waves of an NPR-like program that provides the guidance to bring these two worlds into one, always striving to make our living world as hauntingly beautiful as the parallel worlds we will eventually inhabit.
