Kin by Fletcher Tucker

For fans of Swans, Caroline, ritual ambient, and the sum total of the energies of all living things, Kin by Fletcher Tucker provides an accompaniment to nature, skirting typical desires to encapsulate, augment, or supplant our environment and instead humbly functioning inside. Rhythmic, repetitive, warm chants capture our attention immediately, blending into a supernatural pulse which the industrial concept of time works incessantly to subvert. Surprisingly, Tucker’s approach to naturalistic art contains considerable electronic instrumentation, using synthesizers to establish sweeping backgrounds reminiscent of the comfortable hum of dungeon synth. Regardless of which instruments we use, all of our manipulations or even mere observations of nature leave fingerprints on the world, meaning the choice of electronic over acoustic instrumentation only alters our impact by subtle degrees, not orders of magnitude. The committed surrender to the forces which created us represents a creative philosophy much more so than any particular method, meaning that this delicate, tranquil piece of electronic art succeeds at bowing its head more so than many more aesthetically archaic works ever would.