The touring musician exists in a self-perpetuating state that resembles reverie, a mental and emotional revolving door of temporary havens, temporary homes, temporary glories. The solo touring musician goes beyond such vague routines, clinging to the singular constant of seclusion. Chicago’s Jordan Reyes understands this all too well, having recorded the majority of his most recent endeavor, Fairchild OST and Border Land EP, in motel rooms during a cross-country excursion, just him and his modular synthesizer. Broken white lines. Driving through the night across unlit highways with only the immediate visible in front of you. Dimly lighted quarters acting as the void into which you call, only interrupted by the muted rumbles of neighboring and outside Americana. These are the things conjured on the single “Broken Crown,” premiering here.
An infernal flux of low-end arises out of the nothingness ahead, the nothingness all around. Reyes’ tones are are thick and grumbling, overlapping each other like amoebic blobs. There’s an urgency behind these ambient formations, not melodic or anti-melodic—just pure churning of gut. The glowing hum that you have not realized was there the whole time, mutates into a whirling, warbling mass, the universe’s immersion blender sending all nebulae into upheaval. What was once calming is now the damning thing. And then suddenly something of a pulsation enters the forefront, or is it your own growing maddening sense of disquiet? You travel faster than light only to be left in the dark.
Fairchild OST + Border Land EP is out February 28 via Whited Sepulchre Records.