Maxwell Sterling Hollywood Medieval

[Memory No. 36; 2016]

Rating: 3.5/5

Styles: early OPN, bits of Ferraro, slimy New-Age, Gregorian chant
Others: John Carpenter, Bernard Herrmann, Tim Hecker

Lune d’Hollywood.
Wind of air stained w/ anise.
Swords out, moon out, In-N-Out.
The hills, all of them, undrest &
Foam’d w/ smog, naked, nearly
Enrob’d as it were only by light,
This light, hot, glaz’d & wide, which
Thy eyes seeth.
Thy sight adorned in automobiles.
For thee w’re in L.A.,
Tho thee didn’t knoweth wh’re.
Thy world a text to impose &
Extend into the film of language, yet
Meanings ebb.
The brain’s raw edge of computation &
Courtyard ambience, the dread spewing
Forth hindmost, a glitch-synth o’er
2 moats, then 1, undrest &
Savage, extreme, rude, & cruel,
Behind the scenes in a dream, whilst
Another synth willingly imparts a
Cheeseball moment to
Thee, to thee, only.

That, as it happened, the central term
In this music, around which the vast field
Of other, proper iterations, each of
Them arbitrary, grew.
That of plasticity, a comment on
The city, the ocean at its western edge,
An unyielding text sunny w/ toxins.
Synths create objects & spaces,
Pieces & coins, rooms & corners.
& from these spaces come windows looking out onto
They who speak, who listen;
But how does one, anyone, speak, or make music
While keeping the same I without thinking twice?
Answer that question as a
Frisbee sails over the wall of the castle.

So what have we here.
What have we, glitteringly.
What have we adorned & draped
C. 1350, no, 1950, no, 2016.
This music, how we ornament time.
To slow down, to be with.
To describe the film scene, or enhance it.
As a beautiful command-speech like:
Get thee to thy car.
Get thee to thy computer.
Get thee inside thy castle.
Then now, then maybe, then yes.
In the car, in the middle of the street,
In a sonata, in an email.
This that flows or converges or seeks might
Be what it is and not what it is said to be,
Roaring, ravening, rendering.
A velvety unreachableness, w/ all the plastics,
Un-eco & hazy.

& woven around & with a landscape,
Non-metaphorical enough to grasp it,
This album beckons us to experience
The phantasmagoria of multi-time.
A student of composition, MIDI or otherwise,
Maxwell Sterling knows how to create drama,
To open space, & allow for emotions to reach their
Peak before shattering them.
A voice, as if drowning.
2 voices, 1.
The absence of drums creates its own rhythm.
& tension.
& action.
One by one a thing, opening.
Black Plague poetics w/ palm trees.
Sunny, in a bad way.
W/ no indication as to how
The system works.
Not a fairy tale, or a metaphor.
Just a secret history.

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