For a guy who spends all day selling / writing about records — working at the much beloved Sloth and penning his weekly column for FFWD, Calgary’s arts and news rag — Devin Friesen must relish the opportunity to revel in the disruption of the self-repressive fictions of “one-person/one-guitar,” which he lays to waste in his Licht-ian/Niblock-ian efforts. Instead of singer-songwriter sensitivities, post-rock’s predictable set-plays of major key peaks and valleys (or anything else generally expected), we are given eight patient and slow-burning pieces for chiming guitars, stochastic piles, negative space, extended technique, needles and pins, dense haze, ringing tones and expansive drones. Unpredictable, but not frenetic: one man’s love affair with feedback, documented with the discerning expertise of when to dog-pile sounds and when to let them breathe.
Created in partnership with the Canadian noisemakers, the late legend's final collaborative LP enshrines his ability to lift joint ventures into otherworldly territory. Bandcamp Album of the Day Nov 8, 2021