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LP
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SODA 014LP
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Iggy goes West! Soda Gong welcomes back Kansas City-based musician Iggy Romeu with his latest collection as Mister Water Wet. Cold Clay from the Middle West is a (characteristically) sharp left turn from his last two records, with Romeu offering up a surprising and addictive mélange of crackpot Americana and smoky noir beat science. "Cold Clay Suite" opens the record, a five-part ride into the sunset that features Cooder-esque guitars, cat-gut fiddle, horse-hoof percussion, stadium organs, penny whistle, and bleary-eyed polysynth ruminations, among sundry other ephemera. Multi-instrumentalist Will Yates, known to most as Memotone, shows up three times on the album, lending clarinet, keys, guitars, banjo, sarangi, and vibraphone to these kaleidoscopic productions. It's a wild ride of a record akin to following a dotted bridleway on a crumpled old map, marvelously variegated and stitched together as only MWW knows how. Get along, now.
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LP
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SODA 011LP
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Following releases on West Mineral and Lillerne Tapes, Iggy Romeu's inimitable Mister Water Wet project makes its Soda Gong debut. Top Natural Drum feels like a double entendre ode to digging culture, drawing equally from the plant life in the dirt and the grooves in the stacks. Tracks like opener "Soak" concoct a haze of resonant ceramic/wooden percs, skittering drum programming, and addictive yet diffuse melodic and harmonic textures. Dusty-fingered nodders like "Caged at Last", "Classicfit," and "Gossamer Hits Softly Spun" harken back to the glory days of instrumental hip-hop and downtempo, sounding a bit like transmissions from some lost Landspeed Records or Mo' Wax comp, or like field recordings from the courtyard at Scribble Jam that have been infused with the slippery sonic signatures and sleights of hand that define MWW productions. What links these two distinctive tonal registers is a sort of lingering warmth -- warmth like the saturation of natural dye or sunlight on a brisk, clear Midwestern autumn day. Written and produced by Iggy Romeu. Mastered by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering. Artwork by Felix Luke and Alex McCullough. Die-cut sleeve; gloss laminate finish; includes download code; edition of 500.
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2LP
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OUEST 095LP
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Following a golden first streak of releases by uon, Exael, and Pendant in 2018, Huerco S' West Mineral Ltd. returns to mine a rich seam of ambient jazz sampledelia by Mister Water Wet; a Puerto Rican artist with a gift for conveying in-between, gently altered states of mind and the logic of the natural world. Revealing Mister Water Wet's music for the first time beyond his circle of friends, Bought The Farm yields an elementally cool and breezy spirit guided by a first thought/best thought intuition through 55 minutes of crackly, hand-built music riddled with ephemeral soul. In terms of texture and structure, it's a sound maybe best compared with Jan Jelinek at his most frayed and sloppy, or even a pastoral inversion of Kelman Duran's rugged chop 'n' paste arrangements, essentially rendering a distinctive style that hovers between heavy-lidded, Afro-Latinate jazz, sampled indigenous instrumentation, and strains of gently bucolic, ambient introspection. Although based in the USA, Mister Water Wet spends a lot of time with his pops in Puerto Rico, and the subtropical natural world and revolutionary politics of the Caribbean islands osmotically informs Bought The Farm. In ten parts ranging from zoned-out drifts to pockets of sweetly psychedelic delirium, Mister Water Wet uses a patented blend of sampled artefacts and dusty magic to literally and metaphysically connote his conception of a spiritual home, framing a portal from where he can "speak" to Pedro Albizu Campos, a leading figure of the Puerto Rican independence movement, while immersing listeners in his lushly verdant, oasis-like bosques, or naturally sprawling woodlands and iridescent rivulets of sound. Ultimately Bought The Farm is a beautifully modest and intimate expression of self, heard through the prism of the lands and spirits that shaped it. From the aeolian bleeps of "Walking West" to the flutes snagged in the breeze of "Gaduduman Trades," atavistic traces of the natural world and ancient traditions lead into moments of heart-rending dreaminess in the humble centerpiece of burnished drums and dream pop diva called "Dart," before flowing out into oceanic new age with "Cuevas," whereas highlights such as "Drought" feel like Kelman Duran cooking a wood-fired interlude for Boards of Canada, and the heat curdled jazz-fusion of "Gills" gives way to a memorably sublime parting statement in "Sarah Sleeping."
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