having you, halving me by thought refuge

https://thoughtrefuge.bandcamp.com/album/having-you-halving-me

Genre: Ambient

Rating: 5/5

released on bandcamp April 8, 2022

Clocking in at about 16 minutes, time is somewhat of an irrelevancy for this dreamy instrumental guitar centered ep. There’s two important things going on here and I’m going to reference Grouper and Guided by Voices to explain it to you. The Grouper part is simple. There’s a general ambiance about what’s happening here that’s akin to Grouper. But the more interesting thing is the Guided by Voices thing. It doesn’t sound anything like GBV. It’s the way, especially on Alien Lanes, they create fabulous hooks and then seemingly throw them away. The power in that, is that, at this point in time, in the history of pop music , we no longer need to have the song fully realized to hear it fully realized. We know what’s going to be created and the entire symphony unfolds in our minds without even being written. Each unique to our own preferences and our own consciousness. It’s more powerful and more perfect as a seed than as a tree.

thought refuge has accomplished the same astonishing feat here. Every song on here is a seed. And I don’t just mean unrealized potential. I’m saying it’s fully realized in your mind already. For every minute you listen another thirty minutes unfolds in your consciousness in a place that’s beyond time.