Sparkling Wide Pressure - Meaning Plane (Colour Ride CD-R)

Here's one that was sent to me by Frank Baugh (Kim Dawn head, much touted in these parts) on British imprint Colour Ride, more of which was supposed to arrive my way but has yet to. Couldn't wait any longer though to get around to this one, as it's one of the better items I've heard from Frank, which is of course saying something serious.

At five tracks, this might well be Frank's widest reaching excursion yet, at once spaced out and intensely personal. Right from the get-go with this one the sound is different, more intimate or something. Frank's always got a heavy emotion associated with his stuff, but "String" fades in off a wind surfboard, arms out and fingers stretched to deliver a message concerning some encroaching darkness. You're at once heartened this guy showed up and had enough care to do so, but also aware you get active quick before these dudes show up. A dead synth line appears right away, signaling the entry to "Parts," whose various parts garble together like watching some factory chuggings from high above--all business below, but it looks so tiny from this far away. Some guitar wiggles come in while the metronome punctures light holes in the mesh and hollow vocal ohms recede back into the skull. "Bed" gets even deeper in to the nowhere world, opening with this loop that sounds like the opening to that Moby hit or something before calling on some fuzzed synth and organ to urge it off the shallows and into the deep. Slips right along this way, rich and warm as a bath with gentle light modules shimmying across until it lifts itself up, blue droplets shedding off its feathered weight. And what does it get upon arrival you ask? Why, little guitar fragments of diddies long forgotten wedged against the gentle curdling of shredded mouth maneuvers.

"Plane" is, if you can believe it, a real live "song," featuring Baugh's dreary vocal delivery over some coma-inducing geetar before slipping into an ephemeral, glittering space where resonances are heightened and everything shimmers. And among it all lies the caveman, hanging tight and living right. This one grinds itself out for a good stretch too, really stretching its rubbers in the name of ultra drift attitudes. Closing the disc is "Vapor," which reads like a stripped back Cluster number, with crescendoing synth warmth escalating and retreating over small piano melodies, barely there and quite content and warm. This has got to be one of Frank's best yet--it moves through so many zones but still retains a strong sense of unity, perhaps his most assured outlook yet. A must grab if you're into anything that Frank's done yet, or anything at all for that matter.