In the crowded field of guitar droneworks, UK musician Lee Stokoe could be said to be hidden in plain sight. For two decades, his solo project Culver and in-house tape label Matching Head have produced a consistent stream of releases without approaching anything near household-name status. This is due in part to a workmanlike, low-profile approach to recording and releasing music, despite time served in the mighty Skullflower. And then there's the music itself: unpolished, unsettling, a history of textures divorced from any linear notions of progress. Prolific as Culver has been, Gateshead Graves marks only the third instance of Lee filling 24 inches of grooved real estate on his own (after the obscure Route of Aesthetic lathe-cut and the oddly elusive Dead Winter Blood LP). It features two side-long tracks that put the listener first in the hold of a ship bound nowhere good and then in an aircraft headed in roughly the same direction. Volume and isolation recommended for an appropriately immersive experience. Mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk at Stereophonic Mastering (Grouper, Sublime Frequencies, Mississippi Records).
LP $20.25
01/08/2001