All Lands and Customs Are Ephemeral by Tiocph

For fans of The Caretaker, Infinity Frequencies, and the sort of quiet dystopia that sets in like a cool morning fog, All Lands and Customs Are Ephemeral by Tiocph uses broken transmission music to call attention to capital’s goal of optimizing all culture out of existence. Broken transmission music by definition sources from pre-existing recorded material, and this album’s decision to focus on traditional music from around the world makes the intervening digital noise all the more disturbing. These traditions melt away under the thumb of instant information, the speed of communication eviscerating dialects, customs, communities, occupations, and people. Not to mention the relentless pace of colonialism, which explicitly targets cultures for destruction, stamping out the identities that appear here already faded into the background, at any time seconds away from disappearing permanently. Regardless of our thoughts on the dangers of nationalism and other such identity groups, the world as heard on this album approaches rapidly from all sides, sweeping thousands of years of history away in its pyroclastic flow, leaving us dumbstruck at the magnitude of our loss.