Evan Caminiti is a California-based experimental musician with a focus on processed and prepared guitar. Co-founder of the psychedelic drone duo Barn Owl and additionally active as half of the duo Higuma, he’s released nearly a dozen solo efforts since 2007. While earlier albums such as 2012’s Night Dust concentrated on expansive guitar-based compositions recalling ambient music as well as shoegaze, Caminiti incorporated synthesizers into subsequent works such as 2015’s Meridian and 2020’s Varispeed Hydra. Evan Caminiti’s slow but steady progression towards electronic music from sand-swept guitar drone mirrors the pace of the music he makes. It has been measured, each move well-considered and clearly intentional. Synthesizers hiss and crackle under layers of reverb and fog. Sounds undulate and implode in upon themselves, with bursts of noise dropping in and out to create shadows of rhythm.
Varispeed Hydra by Evan Caminiti, 2020, Dust Editions on #neuguitars #blog #EvanCaminiti
▶︎ Varispeed Hydra | Evan Caminiti (bandcamp.com)
Los Angeles based artist Evan Caminiti returns with the follow up to 2017’s Toxic City Music.
Living in the wrong timeline, dreaming of possible utopias; Varispeed Hydra beams in like a collection of broken transmissions, terrestrial sounds melting into the abstract and rising again as vaporous spectres. Three years in the making, Hydra was recorded utilizing a variety of electroacoustic processes and honed in live performances ranging from the sound art setting of NYC’s Issue Project Room to the future-club environment of DOMMUNE in Tokyo. While thematically following Toxic City Music, it moves past that album’s emphasis on superfund sites and the proverbial rat race to turn an ear towards more rural environs.
With a focus on some of the sounds we stand to lose if we continue on our current trajectory of ecological destruction, birds, insects, and water are most often found amongst the glowing synthesizers and warped electric guitar that comprise the album’s melodic and rhythmic core. Connecting a thread between musique concrete and dub, these sounds are atomized and diffused before being woven together with a sense of urgency, a colorful and restless haze. Phasing percussion and blurred melodies are wrapped in a fog as they tumble and glitch, occupying a space where ominous rumblings and bucolic bliss blur together. An offering of cautious optimism in the age of anxiety.
credits
released April 3, 2020
Written and produced by Evan Caminiti, featuring electronics by Lisa McGee.
Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studios.
Artwork by Michael Vallera and Zane Morris.
Vinyl cut at Dubplates and Mastering Berlin.
Distributed by Morr Music (EU) and Forced Exposure (US)
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