blackwater - istanbul / woodstock

a personal favorite, the first blackwater record. two tracks forming a kind of abstracted travelogue, a kind of soundscaping ambient dub, split between lazy bucolic countryside and aquatic echoes of a shapeshifting harbor city. it's not so clear though. if the a/b etchings are any indicator, "istanbul" sounds more like "woodstock" and vice versa, or at least they both have a bit of istanbul to them (and maybe "woodstock" is just a title). there aren't northeastern woodland bird calls or vendors speaking turkish. there is a map of istanbul printed on the insert, but that's the extent of direct reference. so it becomes personal. they aren't trying to take us there. these are their memories, processed into amorphous, tranquilized drifts, like blurry old photographs coming alive in their minds, split between numb bliss and kind of an unmoored unease, a gentle seasickness mirrored by the knocking boat rhythms on the b-side. it's an itch you can't scratch, and how transportative it is to not have everything spelled out for you! it speaks to the true brain and the true feeling of life. this is the kind of oblique record you can come back to indefinitely.

in a similar vein to the interlocking shapes of primorje, the woody, smudgy dub undercurrents of gaia tones (at first i was convinced this was made by the same artist), or the sepia/metallic gray palette of dome, although the bruce gilbert comparisons would be properly fleshed out a few years later on their lp, another favorite and the closest thing i've heard to a contemporary a.c. marias.



label: blackwater - tain 001
condition: vg+/vg+, comes with insert.