At some point near the end of my historic run in college — seriously, I’m the Ryan Leaf of college-to-pro regressions — I became obsessed with the movie Once Upon a Time in America, starring Robert DeNizzy (distant relative of Donato Dozzy, I do believe) and directed by Sergio Leone. Particularly, I loved the part where it jumped from the present to the past to the future, all on the heels of an opium-induced haze DeNiro’s character was in. I bring this sequence up because the slow-lifting, ever-drifting, thought-sifting sections of the film’s soundtrack (by Ennio Morricone if you’re keeping score, get it?) seem to form the core of what Nick Storring creates and achieves with Gardens, a luscious, winding path through six tracks of thick head-forest.
In the day/age of cassette drone, Storring’s labor of love ironically stands out from the pack even more because it is totally effects-free. AND because it represents a specific mode, mood, and tone, rather than a smattering of pedal-speak piled up and slammed down onto tape. Frankly, if you’re in the whole Ben Frost/Philippe Petit axis, you couldn’t ask for a better, more next-level continuation of that sound. Funded by the Canadian Music Center, Gardens is delicate yet crisp, trippy yet grounded, hypnotizing yet never repetitive, and (perhaps most importantly) never so beholden to concept that it loses its fundamental girth as a composition. If you’d like to get your hands and ears around that girth, head to Storring’s record release show with Ben Frost on October 24 in Toronto, or order the physical artifact from Scissor Tail Records November 11.
• Nick Storring: http://www.nickstorring.ca
• Scissor Tail Records: http://www.scissortailrecords.com
