The Stringed Theory - General Relativity
Thursday, June 26. 2008
The Stringed Theory
Artist: The Stringed Theory
Album: Universal Relativity
Label: Stadtgruen
When the site blew up last year much was lost - dissolved like light into the blinding hole of webspace. One thing that I've been meaning to re-up was this short review of a gorgeous (and free) record from last year so...
The Stringed Theory is the project of Dustin Frelich who projects his warm pulses and fuzzy drones into space out of California - but releases music on the Web-only label Stadtgruen, a German label which, with no recourse to the piss-taking masses, pitches itself boldly into the fray with a manifesto that seeks to explore the divisions between culture and nature and is named after the urban green spaces of Berlin. Frelich's own project is remarkably apposite to this in that it utilises the language of particle physics and the medium of electronics to create what is essentially a sound full of soothing bucolic warmth. It's difficult to listen to this album, especially loud with headphones, and not feel a certain enveloping heat-haze fall over you, or to feel buoyed up by a real sense of pulsing levitation. In many respects ;i>Universal Relativity feels (and it is an album that you absorb as much as hear) close to the textures the shoegaze bands explored at the beginning of the early 90s - not so much the raw volume of My Bloody Valentine but the sonic cave cathedrals of the very early Verve recordings, or what Slowdive were trying to do with Pygmalion: it has a similar sense of dynamic space and at times it feels like the surface of drones and oscillations are going to part and reveals obscure nascent songs. A gorgeous album. And to top it all, it's available as a free download from the label.
Download: The Stringed Theory - Universal Relativity
