sunken fence - Lentic

 Released: February 19

Known by many other names, sunken fence brings us their first album bearing the new moniker filled with some rather innovative approaches to rhythm. The album is almost entirely comprised of field recordings with infrequent synthetic accompaniments with the field recordings standing out as the predominate source of strange rhythms though not all tracks have such a focus. The album’s opener, “afterbay,” is almost completely bereft of rhythms, utilizing looped field recordings to create a surreal yet natural feeling soundscape that is rather hypnotic despite its perceive formlessness. 

As the album goes on, the rhythms become a more prominent feature with “ducking pond” building one of the most intensely strange drum loops here. It has an almost slurry vibe to it, with the hits stretched out far beyond sounding natural at all as hits echo, waver, and slide all around the stereo field with the consistency of formed mush. It one of my favorite tracks on the album as it effectively draws you in to the middle of a beautiful mess and sloshes you around in it. “Forebay” pulls a similar act as well, though in a far noisier fashion. Whirring, oscillating, and other strange sounds wrap you up in a bizzaro-type soundscape that never finds a solid footing, but instead chooses to continually morph and shift itself in odd shapes over and over. 

Lentic is an album that is quite literally all over the place. All manner of disparate sounds are mashed together, whether they naturally desire to or not. The ensuing sound is something akin to tamed madness, given just a wide enough latitude to wander around without ever crossing an abrasive boundary that makes it pure noise, The arrangements are organic and embrace a happy accident aesthetic while the collection of sounds and elements gives pure ear candy quality to each track.