Surfaces of a Broken Marching Band

Anticipate label head Ezekiel Honig makes his initial appearance for the imprint, with his first album since 2006's Scattered Practices (released on Microcosm Music). In addition to working on the release at hand, Ezekiel has been concentrating on moving Anticipate through its first two years of existence, and Surfaces Of A Broken Marching Band is as much a statement on the label as a whole as it is a reflection of his current working process. Further developing his musique concrete-influenced compositional procedure of giving emphasis to the sounds of everyday life, Honig constructs his music out of an almost incidental assembly of materials, editing and processing them into a whole, which adopts the shards as if they always belonged. The low hum of a pad and ground-skimming percussion noise play off brightly distended piano chords, thick, wheezing horns, and widespread constellations of re-pitched guitar. Playing with looping and lateral progressions alike, Honig subtly hints at his background, while utilizing a broader palette of instrumentation than on his past releases. Softly chugging 4/4 rhythms barely nod towards muted slow-motion techno, while reworked structures retain his characteristically warm, textured sound.

In this manner, he delves into electro-acoustics with a sensibility that includes elements of clearly-defined genres, while allowing those definitions to quickly dissipate. These varied approaches and sources allow for the building of a constant tension between an intrinsic affinity for humid melodies and darker tonal shades, congealing into tracks which feel simultaneously minimal and dense. This music is imbued with an intimacy created by opening the spectrum to include sounds from crowded parties in cavernous spaces, subway stations, the interiors of an airliner, and other geographic departures.