Perhaps I’ll need to renew my subscription to The Wire or spend more time on other blogs, as I can’t believe I missed the work of Los Angelina Geneva Skeen. My hometown is producing so many fine artists working within ambient and electroacoustic music that it has become (happily) difficult to keep up with this wellspring of talent.
Double Bind defies proper categorization, sitting somewhere between academic musique-concrète, noise-style improvisation and a touch of mysticism in Skeen’s work. Though bleak, there is a feeling of being inside of a warm, pulsating, silvery ocean in these compositions. The one which won me over was the second track, Leveled Ground, Bottomless Pit. These compositions are, in every sense of the word, alive. The listener will feel the sounds go in and out of the ears and tingle the bones a bit.
She has made me a fan, and I look forward to hearing the rest of her catalog. Touch Music and Room40, among other labels, have unleashed a treasure.
