Root Coiled - The Carriage Went Flying

 Released: April 12

While the certainty of the premise behind The Carriage Went Flying is murky, the aesthetics of the album are clear. Over six tracks, we are treated to a series of soundscapes that range from dense and claustrophobic to sparse and airy made through creative layering of seemingly random found sounds. It starts out with “to pry open those,” which begin rather cacophonously with the sounds of hammering, doors shutting, and a lot of other sounds that make it feel like it’s old industrial (like turn of the century manufacturing, not the genre of music). But it’s when the voices start around of the midpoint that the track takes on an extra level of surreality as the voices never seem to finish a full sentence and quickly begin to overlap each other haphazardly and making the whole thing feel ultimately chaotic and overstimulated. 

The next track takes that overfilled and claustrophobic sensation and puts the brakes to it. “vast tracks” begins with a bit of chattering noise but quickly transforms into a bit of mechanical sounding drones. There is still that pervasive cold feeling that began in the first track - a cold, metallic, and almost overly sterile feeling that seems to come from the collected recordings themselves. “down the absolute” brings back some of the voice recordings, though this time they’ve been morphed into something less recognizable, pitch stretched and made unstable. The first time we get something that feels warm is on “merely mended” as a short guitar part picks up on and off throughout the track while the cacophony of what sounds like it could be a restaurant bangs on about, getting louder and louder as the track progresses. The album ends with the most minimal of tracks, “sterile cap.” A brittle little drone carries the track along in a rather ghostly setting with only the accompaniment of a soft hissing static until we get some additional and unrecognizable noises at the end. 

The best part about this experience is the way the soundscapes are constructed to evoke a sense of familiarity while undercutting it by leaving the environment unclear. On “merely mended,” I got the vague impression of a restaurant nectar of the dinging dinner bell, the clattering of what might be dishes, and indistinct overlapping conversations. But the sounds, while seemingly familiar, have a sense that they aren’t what they seem to be. This adds up to the totality of the soundscape and makes the whole thing just seem the presence level of “off” and disorienting. It’s a rather unique experience overall, especially with the quality of the recordings giving a coldness without sounding overly thin or crispy. It perfectly balances an uncanny sensation with grounded atmospherics.