Chris Smith / Justin Fuller – S/T CD

Melbourne residents Chris Smith and Justin Fuller have been creating and documenting various forms of music together since the late 1990's. Over seven years in the making, their eponymous long-player takes in pre-occupations with austere, shimmering textures, maximalist shuddering walls of noise, and many things between. A broad and compelling approach in terms of sound-source and recording technique, any aspect suggesting theory or intellect is already overcome by brute physicality and lilting tear-jerkers. This is what Aquarius Records had to say about this release: "It's hard to discern exactly what the instrumentation is, there are most certainly guitars, and according to the liner notes there is also piano and accordion, but with records like this, it's not what you're playing, it's how you play them and what you do with the sounds once you've made them. These two wrangle the various sounds into long stretches of slow shifting ambience. Some tracks are delicate and dark, barely there shimmers of crumbling low end and distant glimmering high end, while others are massive walls of guitar, churning chaotically, but smoothed into warm thick whorls. The heavier tracks definitely remind us of Sunroof! or Vibracathedral Orchestra or even a less mangled Wolf Eyes or a way prettier SUNNO))). The prettier tracks have a bit of Tim Hecker going on, all blissy and fuzzy and beautifully blurred. The whole record is quite dreamy in fact, whether buzzing malevolently, or drifting languorously, a gorgeous chunk of blissed out guitardrone"