Foliage by Asher & Jordan
Asher & Jordan brings together two of our favorite Canada-based experimental recorders: Airick Asher Woodhead, aka Doldrums (Arbutus, Sub Pop, Endless), and Jordan Christoff, usually of the wonderful PJS duo with Patrick Dique. As the name suggests, their new album together -- Foliage -- is lush and organic. Though not without some hard edges, in their universe the sound of synthesis feels seamless with nature. Granular and chemical, their vibrations suggest bright bursts of life and shady scenes of decay. Foliage is the result of countless hours of recordings made by two friends who have shared psychedelic inspiration for about a decade, since meeting at Montréal's Torn Curtain community in the early 2010s.
The recordings were made on a zoom recorder, performed and composed live on the fly, with no screens or overdubbing. "Our collaborations are made in the quiet corners of Montreal warehouses. You can encounter these sonic spaces as a respite from the anxiety of urban living and dancefloors, a dandelion growing out of cement." Other tracks sound as though they were made far from cities, fully in the non-human world, created beside ocean tides and sharing tempo with slow natural processes like erosion and crystallization. Other tracks were made beyond the physical realm entirely; deep in the night, in a dissolved state, a sonic miraj emerges and shimmers like a single endless breath.
"The perfect listen from the first time you dive in, the perfect listen for the moments you know you will need it." -Lost in a Sea of Sound
"A truly unclassifiable effort that’s light and dark, bright and shady, earthy yet not always in the physical realm, you’ve probably never heard anything like Foliage before, and that’s a big part of its charm." -Take Effect
"...blooming ambient rhythms and kinetic movements." -Beats Per Minute
"...beautiful . . . a great little release." -The Trailhead
"Transportive... a great deal of depth and detail in these recordings." -The FFFoxy Podcast
Recorded live / no screens
Mastered by Airick Asher Woodhead
Artwork by Samantha Wendel
Tape photos by Emily Dodson
Tracklist
| 1. | Ripples | 5:44 |
| 2. | Foliage | 6:45 |
| 3. | Carol | 3:06 |
| 4. | Melting Bicycles | 1:12 |
| 5. | Docking | 5:01 |
| 6. | Ambient Human Power Generation | 9:45 |
Credits
License
CC BY-NC 3.0. See the Creative Commons website for details.
Est. 2010
"Your decency remains unimpaired, your virility unharmed, your person is free from any degrading submission, but in your hand is a tambourine." -Seneca