YANN NOVAK & MARC MANNING - Some Clouds



Concurrent with the release of Relocation.Reconstruction is Some Clouds, a collaboration between Novak and Marc Manning. A thirty-two-minute, single-track piece available in a limited edition of 100 copies, the release appears on the Koyuki (light snow) imprint overseen by David Sani (shinkei) and Luigi Turra. The material is naturally in a long-form, minimalist vein, but it also sounds somewhat different from what one might expect, as Novak and Manning use multiple electric guitar improvisations in conjunction with laptop processing to generate the material. An undercurrent of low-level rumble acts as a connecting thread throughout, while blurry, silvery washes drift in, yes, cloud-like manner up above. The piece grows ghostlier, haunted even, as long plumes of muffled tones exhale with growing intensity until a state of calm settles in, with the piece's multiple layers cohering into a thick drone. Framed by percussive accents that add a gamelan-like character to the work's opening and closing sections, Some Clouds gradually disappears, growing ever quieter in its final minutes until it drifts entirely from view.

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