Meadow Argus - To The Valley Below

Released: October 2

On his latest album, Tynan Krakoff brings us a wonderful half hour of new material from his Meadow Argus project full of fuzz and warble. The project is known well for an assortment of hazy, warped, and crackly soundscapes and To The Valley Below hits the mark quite nicely by really leaning into the sound artifacts of the most prominent instrument here - the microcassette recorder. Everything feels rather constrained due to the low bandwidth reproduction of these tiny tapes, yet it still manages to feel full and fleshed out. The album is divided into to roughly equal parts titled “Wheeling Overhead” and “To The Valley Below.” Both play on generally the same themes, with a few differences in tone and organization. 

The first half of the experience is rather energetic compared to the second. “Wheeling Overhead” is the very vocal based of the two, which makes for a lot of strange, beautiful, and hectic moments. It opens up with a bit of indiscernible vocals that repeat in a disorienting loop, taking over much of the sound. It is also accompanied by a persistently rewinding tape, whirling its low fidelity recording over and over until fading away in into a wash of sound. We then get a rather long bit of a random conversation talking about a vacation on an island and going to work, which is something I’ve always enjoyed about much the Meadow Argus project. It takes these otherwise dull and mundane conversation and turns them into something mysterious and unexplained, taking a “slice of life” approach and decontextualizing it. 

The second half of the tape plays out much calmer and seems to play on a bit more of a liminal approach. No voices this time, only loops of organs and field recording noises or textures cycling along. It’s a rather interesting juxtaposition as the first half has a vibe of trying to remember what happened on a random Tuesday while the second half puts us somewhere where we can possibly remember. Just sounds and light bits of music to carry us along in this strange uninhabited place. With both of these halves, it makes for a lovely little half hour of colorful introspection into the more mundane.