Recently I sat down with RSN’s two new, simultaneously released albums, indistinction #1 and indistinction #2 – fresh off German experimental label attenuation circuit – and got ready for some deep listening.
Almost immediately Thomas Rosen’s sound-sculpture, ambient-drone-and-noise-project’s composition affinities take complete control, and I am pulled into an abandoned brutalist structure, almost 90 minutes of noise perked, drone leaning ambient music playing out a pair of massive speakers out of frame. Each album is a listening experience in three parts, RSN scoring the dust settling on an almost perfect shard of crystal glass, vibrating under the weight of droning, shifting tones, sending a cloud of detritus below, swirling in eddies of ambient light.
Rosen’s speakers shed their weathered Tolex, exposing their structure, a labyrinth of glowing, wretched cables wound tight like muscles, squeezing long labored groans from the now almost living cones. Sound and time and space find a breath in some bright thought in the listener’s mind—where one thought stops and a new sound begins, where the second hand falls off beat leaving us suspended in a moment of ambient listening.
Stylistically, both #1 and #2 are quite similar, but with each sits a triptych, which is wholly singular. Dynamically RSN oscillates between moments of quiet and loudness “indistinction #1.3” and “indistinction #2.2” find harmonic instances of melodic stability and feedback drawn lines of tension huddled in submissive dynamics. It is hard not to savor the quiet moments where everything seems to line up just so. Louder tracks swap rotas of drone and noise and harmonically rich, orchestral sound sculpture in brilliant turns.
The dual-disc listening experiences starts with a statement—”indistinction #1.1” is aggressive even in its more subtle moments but finishes strong as a textured, time-minded, meditative ambient object that is as droning as it is harmonic and paced quickly enough that its slow melodic turn can guide the listener through deep listening. “indistinction #1.2” and “indistinction #2.3” also stand out as deftly tamed noise-forward tracks, converting unknown sound sources into distorted, reverb drenched movements.
It appears to be the aim of Thomas Rosen (member of the german group [ B O L T ] and founder of boutique cassette label momentarily records) to tap into that veil between the word of sonic possibility and that which can be held onto in one way or another. RSN gives us the opportunity to listen in on that veil as Rosen sees it and I believe it is a good sight to see. Where drone and ambient meet RSN has brought back a sample of beautiful musicality.
Curtis Emery
Curtis Emery is a poet and synthesist from New England whose work has been published, anthologized, and translated in Conjunctions, ELDERLY, Sierra Nevada Review, Pamenar Press, Blush Lit, & others. curtis can be found on the web at curtisemery.io
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