Grooves Magazine
9/04
Collin Buttimer

New Skin is a generous treat for fans of leftfield improvisers who also find themselves attracted to evocative soundworlds. Notable contributors to this project include Eyvind Kang on viola, Bill Frissell on guitar, and Tucker Martine, who produces, supplies field recordings, and plays harmonica, omnichord, and a host of other instruments. Martine’s production at times suggests hot Southern afternoons spent drifting down rivers on lazy currents, but don’t be misled to believe that there’s anything at all indolent about this music. Rather, its tonal colors have been carefully adjusted: earth tones tweaked toward the golden, upper registers enriched with vibrant azures.

Martine gently blankets found sounds—the types of gently off-kilter sounds encountered when a radio drifts off its station—onto layers of acoustic instrumentation. Such elements are like filigreed dust patterns or the sunlit shadow of a lace curtain cast upon an interior. There’s something time out of mind about Mount Analog, as though its music was recorded two or three generations ago, even if the collaging and occasional burst of heavy percussion are notably contemporary. Much of this album provides the sort of sensory delight experienced on reading Bruno Schulz’s descriptions of home from The Street of Crocodiles (e.g., "blazing with sunshine and scented with the sweet melting pulp of golden pears").

New Skin isn’t the work of somebody secreted away in one-on-one communion with his or her computer. Instead, it’s a lovingly crafted and beautiful work that reflects an intimately observed engagement with the lived world.