Exactly What You Lost
Seht & Stelzer
$12.99
This first album of cross-hemisphere hum by Seht (the nom de musique of one Stephen Clover) and Howard Stelzer emerged organically via tapes shared through the post between New Zealand and Boston over the course of a year or so. Without any spoken agenda or external organizing concept from the start, the music willed itself into a darkly psychedelic, implacably melancholy haze. A quick scramble of caffeinated tape action kicks things off, then the album rapidly dissipates into a thick, black sleep of environmental debris and humid fog. Worn loops were played into various outdoor acoustic environments (playgrounds, front porches, trees, other prosaic spots), then fed back into low-tech machines for further harmonic decay. Shapes form in the shadows and slip away as the edges blur. After a few attempts to heave itself up onto its feet, Exactly What You Lost eventually huffs its last breath and dissolves in a cavern of industrial tics.
Seht & Stelzer “Exactly What You Lost” CD by Intransitive Recordings
Praise for Exactly What You Lost:
“It’s their process and the materials involved that give the duo the feeling of a yellowing photograph. Occasional footsteps, outdoor noises, and the fumbling of a tape recorder all help emphasize the mysterious, lived-in character of Exactly What You Lost. Through fragility, high-end-deprived wow and flutter, and thrift-store memories, Seht and Stelzer have come together as a singular unit and created nothing short of a humble monster.” – Tiny Mix Tapes
“A foggy stew of dark auras and viscous aural ooze. Decay and disintegration… with music that’s allowed to move, breathe, and, ultimately, expire. Impressive.” – Dusted Magazine
“Seemlessly coherent in its fabric and minimalistically pure to the bone in its arrangements. There is not a single note too many in any of these five pieces, neither in the shorter opening tracks, nor in the massive 26-minute finale, which relies on an abrasive bass drone and a single, ghostish melody which rears its head again and again in its defiant struggle against a certain demise, before surrendering to a vaporous solution.” – Tokafi
