thebrokencradle
A really beautiful set of drone pieces that are all at once beautiful and haunting. Really love textures and soundscapes.
Favorite track: October Sixteenth.
Tryst is an invitation to be still, to be completely of time and wholly separate from it. It is an adumbration of the nonlinearity of love. Neither minutes nor lifetimes mean anything when surrounded and engulfed by its grace. In its purest form, all love is divine and not bound by the constructed constraints of time. It is eternal—pain dissolved by joy endlessly.
"In the dark corners of Ryan Gregory Tallman’s Tryst, time becomes a distant memory. When meaning becomes shrouded beneath a leaden veil, we dig in further until a breakthrough is found. Repetitive actions grow heavier with each successive passage, and the advancing narrative begins to crumble under accumulating weight. Tryst is saturated with these moments and Tallman masterfully guides the melancholy toward a place where its yearning metamorphoses into an energizing glow.
Built from two expansive pieces, lifetimes pass beneath echoes while split seconds stretch into oblivion. “October Sixteenth” follows the recurring rise and fall of empires across generations as the mistakes we make are nothing new to the universe at large. Protracted drones shift under pressure, textures slipping past barriers meant to keep such things out of reach. An earthiness emerges in the pallid radiance, wistful drones connecting the flickering dots in the black sky. Everything is covered in a layer of dust, gently tarnished. Within these stretched tones is a contemplative, purposeful build-up, like bringing water slowly to a boil to not scare away the target.
“November, December” follows a similar script, through the arrangement is emboldened. Tallman adds layers of grit and stoicism to the soundscapes, heaving forward in the midnight sun covered in dense, harmonic veneer. Hints of feedback peek through, though the bass is a sandbag that never lets the overwhelmed melodies drift too far skyward. Aural waves echo memories that can’t be forgotten, weaving a connective thread through the entire composition. This music teems with all aspects of life – the joy, heartache, and banality – as it promises new places to find within the static progressions. “November, December” is simply massive in scale.
Tallman’s restraint throughout Tryst is a gift. He never lets these sprawling pieces of music go, keeping held close so that the magic doesn’t dissipate or spread itself too thin. Destruction looms, but we are motionless, unmoved, and ready to let whatever comes wash through us. Sitting idly, content in the stillness of the Earth, we watch mountains crumble and fade into nothingness. Solace only exists in our burial, decay, and eventual reawakening."
Foxy Digitalis, DECEMBER 7, 2021
"The latest release from experimental composer / sound artist Ryan Gregory Tallman is a beautifully minimalist album of drone / dark ambient that explores the “… all-consuming experience of love and loss… “. The music here is deep and layered, with slowly moving and unfolding pieces of music that draw the listener in, entrancing them in the process. Ryan has released over 20 albums to date, and on the basis of Tryst I will definitely be checking them out, because this is absolutely mesmorising!"
This Is Darkness, NOVEMBER 30, 2021
credits
released October 1, 2021
Written and produced by Ryan Gregory Tallman
Art and design by Kevin Gan Yuen
Ryan Gregory Tallman is an electronic composer and sound artist. Using electric guitars, field recordings, sampling, and
modular synthesis, Tallman creates aural sculptures that obscure, warp, and redefine perceptions of space and time. His latest album, Some Absorbed, Some Scattered, was released on March 1st, 2024 on his own Existential Tension Recordings....more
As usual, Kirby manipulates various interwar records to fit a cavalcade of emotional states: blissful (B1, E8), tragic (D2, D5), frantic (E1, E6), and just plain horrifying (F3, G1, H1, K1). gjoe52
Just imagine if these outtakes made it into EATEOT, the project would've been over seven hours! I love how "I Might Be Vanishing" is a stark contrast from other tracks, being only nine seconds. 913GA
The aptly-named Hauntings write songs that are sinister and moody—the seconds in a horror film right before the jump scare. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 3, 2023
“Subway” moves from soothing ambient music to sharp avant-garde and back again, capturing the spirit of the titular train. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 8, 2022
«Soudain l'homme se réveille
au milieu de la nuit
il est saisi par le malaise
et écoute malgré lui
le silencieux vacarme de l'angoisse
le bruit qui ne fait pas de bruit
le silence qui hurle à la mort
dans le grand coquillage de la nuit (...)»
(Jacques Prévert, Soudain le bruit) Ol64