Ethan Rose – Oaks

Ethan Rose is another in a growing number of electronics artists forging links to antique and disused musical apparatus. On his second solo release the Pacific Northwesterner concentrates on the sound of a 1920s Wurlitzer organ he discovered in the Oaks Park Roller Rink in Portland. The sounds of the organ are fed into a digital matrix, but rather than obscure or disassemble the original tone, like a parfumier Rose plumbs into hearts of notes and extracts their essences. Tracks like “On Wheels Rotating” and “The Floor Released” have the warmth of pleasant reflection; the blur and smear of sounds operating like the memory of events overlaying the events themselves. The music is open and optimistic and slowly undulates as most good ambient music will, but contained within the waves is a richness of tone and atomized events that draws you below the surface. In its blend of futurism and nostalgia Oaks is an album unstuck in
time.

Holocene Music