Ezra Buchla: At The Door LP (Care Of Editions, 2013)
December 6, 2013 at 10:41 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Ezra Buchla: At The Door LP
I’ll never forget when I first started doing at WRSU when I was in college, and we got the first CD by The Mae Shi. It consisted of 4 brief spazzy punk songs, and then a 50 minute noise jam. We used to play around with that for sound collage fodder a lot, or just play the entire thing when we felt lazy and didn’t want to actually DJ. Since then, Ezra Buchla has had an extensive resume, also playing in Gowns with EMA and contributing to her solo album, and working with Chelsea Wolfe and Whitman, among others. This solo LP is a stunning work, starting with “A Cruel Man”, consisting of droning, minimalist John Cale-like strings, and eerie hushed vocals. “His Thirsts” starts with some solid, clear tones, then adds on shifting sheets of vacuum-like noise layers, and stirs them into oblivion. “Hail Nothing” is similar to the opening track, with strings and vocals, but is more melodic and structured. It’s an astonishingly beautiful lament of despair and bleakness, definitely exactly the type of beautiful, depressing music you want to spend the entire dark, lonely winter crying along to. On the reverse is sidelong string opus “Black Box”, which starts with low, brooding drone, building into wavering, chattering textures, and later blossoming into a wide array of emotions, by turns enormously beautiful and deeply mournful or even scared. It’s the type of piece where you put it on barely noticing that it’s playing, not really expecting anything, and then after a while it just hits you with astonishing beauty and expressiveness. Wow.
The Answer Is In The Beat 
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