mix for ghosttropics, spirit paths 07

“Interwoven ecosystems, seamlessly blended together by the prolific and largely undefinable SF based artist for the seventh edition of spirit paths.”

TKB – Carp II (Lo On The Ilm, Burgan Triangle Tapes)
Attachment Theory – Broken Perfect (Hymns for a Fading World, Amulet of Tears)
Atte Elias Kantonen – Your Words Their Haze (Cyan Music, OOH-sounds)
Makoto Oshiro + Takahiro Kawaguchi – loci (Lemures Loci, BasicFunction)
Sa Pa – Irradiate (Ambeesh, Short Span)
Infant – My Love (Dustlick, Kino Disk)
Alan & Jan – Together (Take me, I’m yours, faitiche)
Nueen & Defled – Between The Lines (xnd, self-released)
kk.Shucko – SUN TO CLOSE (FLASH BLIND, self-released)
FeLid – Rotate Dub (Magic Hour, ato.archives)
Beau Devereaux – Road Position (Filling Our Hearts With Clouds, Dark Spring Press)
K. Freund – Running thru the Rain (Window Left Open, Soda Gong)
David Wesley Golightly – Ridgeline (Seven Songs for Solo Piano, Communitas Sound)
Imaginary Softwoods – Low Grade Dopamine (Divine Mechanics of Reality, self-released)
H. Flora – Bangsak (amphibians, Tokay Gecko) [Anthropause – bioacoustic recordings from Thailand, sirr-ecords]
Sylvia Lim – things we overheard (Flare, Another Timbre)

I’ve become increasingly comfortable speaking about my creative work alluding to something diaristic or mapped. There’s not an actual diary, but I’ve been better about articulating interior thoughts in writing. Photographs have dates (if that fact slips, i have a general frame they occur in), the places are pretty firmly “there” – I’ve organized recordings by date for a really long time.

I also listen a lot, and listen to a lot of music. A mix is often where I’ve been, moving through spaces and landscape as much as being with a location, or waiting. In-between and in movement. Not quite as marked as a photograph, a recording. This is also ‘“places I’ve returned to and feelings I’ve had recently,” and very present for me as I write this.

For the seventh edition of spirit paths, I’m honoured to present a mix from an artist who I have followed and admired for over a decade and a half, the brilliant and prolific Billy Gomberg. Despite putting out over two dozen releases since 2005—both under his own name and under his long running collaborative project with Andy Guthrie, Fraufraulein—Gomberg has nonetheless maintained a relatively low-key presence in that time, which appears to be almost entirely by design, his sound remaining entirely and uncompromisingly his own. Too active and detailed to be confidently referred to as ambient, too patient and understated to neatly categorize as electronic or glitch, and arguably too structured and meticulous to be boxed into the world of electroacoustic, his work exists comfortably within the margins and wears its vast array of influences as the most subtle of adornments, a deep sea creature camouflaging itself in the cast-off detritus of its environment.

Billy’s etheric and curiously searching sound has perhaps never felt as fully formed and confident as it does on his latest work capacity (released just a few weeks ago on Florabelle), its shifting harmonics and percolating textures conjuring images of a rich and pristine alien environment, its unplaceable field recordings like momentarily captured snapshots of unseen natural phenomena, too vast to comprehend in their entirety. Much like his recorded work, Billy’s mix for spirit paths evades any easy categorization, effortlessly gathering a wide breadth of sonic elements—the warm textural washes of ambient dub, the faded remnants of the club, the quiet intimacy of a piano, the otherworldly mating calls of gecko’s in Thailand— into a slowly unfolding and crystal clear narrative, offering a revealing look into the mind of an artist who has clearly embraced the act of deep and intentional listening as an essential aspect of his artistic practice.

Photo by Erik M

https://ghosttropicssound.substack.com/p/spirit-paths-07-billy-gomberg