It’s interesting to note the way that The Shadow Ring – in common with Whitehouse – became increasingly obsessed and – yes – perverted by language as their careers progressed. By the time of the strange, melancholy later Shadow Ring albums – Lighthouse, Lindus, I’m Some Songs - the earlier surrealist narratives were gradually being replaced by a discomfited Sebaldian grey and a focus more on word as sound and sound beyond meaning. Like Whitehouse they began to deliberately manipulate syntax and sense, corrupting words and smearing tones in order to illicit less defined reactions in the listener while moving further away from ‘vocals’ altogether. In many ways Elklink – the duo of The Shadow Ring’s Graham Lambkin and Adris Hoyos of Harry Pussy – take this tendency to its very extreme.
Last time I encountered Elklink they were being introduced by Heather Leigh at the legendary Brattleboro Free Folk Fest, with Lambkin and Hoyos accompanied by Matt Krefting of Son Of Earth and Scott Foust of Idea Fire Company et al. It’s not often remembered or remarked upon that Elklink played the fest but then their performance was so confusing, so defiantly arch – Foust grated carrots for most of the performance while wearing a trademark orange jump suit, Krefting sat on the floor and played cassettes, Adris faced away from the audience and played a single cymbal – that it doesn’t quite fit the overarching free folk aesthetic that was the festival’s main conceptual thrust. Now, this, a vinyl reissue in an edition of only 500 copies – inevitably immediately sold out at source – that restores their elusive cassette on Polyamory (James Toth’s aka Wand’s great early imprint) from 1999 alongside their contribution to the Colour In Absence Sound compilation from the same year. Recorded at the same time as The Shadow Ring’s Lindus, The Rise Of Elklink magnifies and implodes the early narrative style of The Shadow Ring with a heavy air of suburban ennui somehow transformed into a series of ghostly transports that move well beyond simple sound poetry and into a form of composition that is intimately tied up with the body and the space around it, forsaking the formal satisfaction of poetry and ‘sense’ for a sound with endless subliminal depth, rich with an almost occult sense of implication, suggestion and otherworldly power. Recorded at home straight to four track the songs are accumulations of variously treated monologues and sounds that dissolve into rich miasmic fields of chatter and non-specific drone/environments in a way that owes as much to the work of Robert Ashley and Walter Marchetti as it does to Michigan noise. Indeed, the degree of acoustic/electric confusion is immediately disorientating, as body sounds break down into machine patterns, extraneous domestic sounds take on the form of voices and microphones record the speech of empty rooms. The atmosphere is similar to Whitehouse at points, though paradoxically enough it’s the early Come Org recordings that it most resembles, where Bennett’s vocals were almost impossible to fully decode. The generally malevolent air – which the deliberate breakdown of sense inevitably seems to conjure – also brings to mind the darker Nurse With Wound material like “I Was No Longer His Dominant” or “Fashioned To A Device Behind A Tree” although a more contemporary reference might be the amazingly disquieting series of recordings released by Relay For Death over the past year or so. And of course it has an umbilical straight to the profoundly alienated lost-in-the-fog aspect of the last few Shadow Ring recordings. With a guest appearance from The Shadow Ring’s Tim Goss and some absolutely gripping performances from Adris and Graham, trading vocals, blurring roles until each seem to be a degraded reflection of each other, this is one of the most remarkable, disturbing, impenetrably deep broadcasts from some of the key figures in contemporary underground music. File it alongside Lindus, Put My Dream On This Planet, Total Sex, Automatic Writing, Let’s Build A Pussy, Crowley’s cylinder recordings and Coil’s ELpH workings in the part of your collection reserved for modern classics. Highly recommended!

Debut LP from the trio of Scott Foust, Karla Borecky and Graham Lambkin (The Shadow Ring) consists of radically hand-sculpted home recordings broadcast straight to tape between the years 1999 and 2000. Moves from concrete miniatures to full-blown drone/throat rituals. Recommended.

New solo album from Matt Krefting, a member of Duck, Idea Fire Company, Face/Ass, Son Of Earth, The Believers et al. All cover versions, with tracks by Richard Thompson, Jerry Garcia, Rick Danko and more cut with the help of J. Masics and members of Sunburned Hand Of The Man and The Believers. "My "career" in music is about to enter its 13th year. Lucky 13! I've performed in at least 15 groups (probably more on the order of 20 if you count guest spots) over the years, the most prominent being the long-running "quiet music" combo Son of Earth and the short-lived-but-much hyped Believers. Historically more of an experimental man, the Believers project showcased my always right-below-the-surface interest and passion for all things rock, and so, a couple of years after the demise of that group, I was approached by Ecstatic Peace, who asked me to produce a solo record. For the better part of a year I conceptualized, recruited, and eventually came up with I Couldn't Love You More. An early attempt to marry electronics, field recordings, and song was scrapped in favor of the personal and perhaps obvious choice of producing a covers record. It was the perfect idea, the realization of a dream. Years of singing in the shower and on long car trips had given way to the stuff of fantasy. Why stick to what you know when you can reach for what you've always desired? I asked friends to help with the realization. John Moloney, Phil Franklin, Ron Schneiderman, and Rob Thomas (all of Sunburned Hand of the Man), I've known for years. Same with J Mascis. Old friends John Shaw (who I've done more music with than anyone) and Lynn Myers provide some vocals here and there, as does my wife, Jamie Jo Oltmans. The Wild Card here is John Townsend. Andrew Kesin of Ecstatic Peace introduced me to him, and he was a jack-of-all-trades. He plays on most of the tracks, sometimes exclusively, and co-produced. I chose songs from all over the map, from Rick Danko to John Martyn to the great Bill Fay. Not exactly lightweights, and quite intimidating when their full historical weight is taken into account. However, I attacked each piece with the intensity of one who truly loves these songs. I didn't concern myself with being overly arty or inventive in my interpretations (there are no truly radical re-workings of anything here), instead allowing my own emotional investment in the material to guide me and inform the other players. These are songs of love and longing. The themes are eternal. It's an honor to have had the chance to play them. Enjoy the music." - Matt Krefting, December 2008