Leila Bordreuil

1991, Summer, Huntington Garage Fire

Genre: DARK AMBIENT / DRONE / METAL, ELECTRONIC

Tape

Boomkat Product Review:

Heavy-as-fuck, time-dilating material from longtime fave Leila Bordreuil, released via Aaron Dilloway’s choice Hanson imprint and featuring an extended, growling session on the A side recorded outdoors in front of a VHS projection, with a suite of faded studio meditations on the flip, developed using the audio from that same VHS. In all, just over an hour of killer, killer gear - RIYL Nate Young, Pan Sonic, Kevin Drumm, Victoria Shen, Bill Nace.

Last year, Leila Bordreuil set up her cello and noise table at a cookout in her Brooklyn back yard, playing along to a video her partner's family had made in 1991 when their garage had caught fire. The audio from the recording was piped thru the PA, and Bordreuil accompanied it with searing white noise, feedback loops and bestial cello. Dilloway describes it as one of the best concerts he’s seen and it is, indeed, full fire - opening with quietly growling lowercase feedback that slowly builds in intensity as she splits the atmosphere with plucks and Vainio-style blasts. Rhythms almost materialise, but never quite get there, teasing the mood as she shepherds loops towards chaotic abstraction and then back to stasis. The session really gets moving when she overlays what sound like oscillating cello bursts like a free jazz horn solo; for a few minutes she transcends, carving brittle, sandstone forms out of the sonorous bedrock until they're washed away by a machine hum that bristles with nervous energy.

That side-long session alone would be worth the asking price, but Bordreuil supplements the performance with six additional, studio-based compositions on the b-side that take us somewhere very different, equally compelling. Those queasy, growling drones vanish into a subdued, sub-harmonic meditation on 'Spirit Rising', amplifying tape-damaged echoes into domestic sounds that melt into her peculiar tonalities. Then, 'Years of Dreams' is like a soundtrack to the rust belt's surreal underbelly; Bordreuil sounds as if she's duetting with the outside world, harmonising with traffic noise and passing trains, letting bits of dialogue occasionally slip thru the soundfield. As the side develops, its connection to reality seems to fray; only the throb of the VHS player remains on 'Snow Globe', lubricated by Bordreuil's quivering dronescapes, and on 'The Life of Others', warm pads remind us of Kevin Drumm's 'Imperial' run, bulging into the cycling hiss. By the final track 'Open Field at the End of the World', there's nothing left except an alien tone that sounds as if it’s been pushed beneath leagues of sea water.

Sick, sick gear.

Tape (7)