JESSICA RYLAN

The Noiseweek Company Retreat has been extended indefinitely due to us not knowing how the hell to get out of wherever we are. We're compass-less, and the only thing we can tell about exactly where we might be is that there are trees here, and noise doesn't grow on them. Hence we have to beam out some digital smoke signals to make another quick post, and have had to search through our knapsacks and portable toilets to find something to spew about...we were gonna add some blather to the Air Conditioning fandom we've been hinting at lately, but that rec's been out a while, and all your friends already know about it, right? All your friends know about Jessica Rylan too - we've even blabbed about her before - but they may not know about Interior Designs, which has been out a few weeks at least, but somewhat ignored, maybe due to the incessant Important Records avalanche that seems to bury its own releases like fallen skiers who haven't even had time to stand up before other skiers land on top of them (sorry for that weak metaphor, we're tired).

Anyway, I've had minor quibbles with Jessica's records here and there (like the singing on the Ultra Eczema Can't LP), but for the most part I'm a true believer, and I'll happily defend each second of Interior Designs as the kind of Kool Aid everyone with an ounce of noise interest should be constantly chugging. Pretty much everything Jessica does well is done well here - the Raymond Scott-ish absurdist sound-effect belching (opener "Extroardinary" hits that Scott combo of surreal humor and well-considered science perfectly), the morse-code-ish / transmission-esque sort of Ham-radio art, filled with transistor squiggles and oscillator-speak ("Phantasia"), and the obligatory unexpected wild card (in this case, a really fascinating title-track that drops a trudging drum machine beat under a slightly-untuned acoustic chord strum/meditation that's kinda Jandekian and even D. Bailey-esque at times). Oh, and also the static-y loop/drone/wave thing, here done to near-perfection on "Timeless" (linked below), which uses a tactile cycle of gravelly noises to build a standing wave of sifting hum. Especially dig the way the climactic sound is both powerful and mellow, like the soothing cut of a butcher's knife through one's temporal lobes (we'll work on the metaphor issue once we're outta these woods, we promise...)

mp3:
JESSICA RYLAN: "Timeless" from Interior Designs