Bent Light is a planetarium, a Petri dish. This is music where the microscopic approaches the infinite, sounds sufficiently magnified and lingered on to reveal swirling unseen worlds. A universe where energy cannot be created or destroyed but only constantly transformed. That is to say, our own.

The duo of Michael Slyne & Russell Linder of New London, Connecticut, Bent Light plays improvisations that feel like transmissions. No coincidence that Slyne sometimes tunes in radio waves alongside tape loops, steel strings, pedal boards, and Russ’s pedal steel. Guitars sound metallic, human, cold, and warm. They ping and drone and warp and mourn. They’re at every known point in the stereo field. Human voices sound no less alien and no more, descending like the celluloid angels in that Denis Johnson story where two orderlies find themselves tripping at the drive-in movie theater amidst an unexpected swirl of snow.

It’s too beautiful what these guys do, so they let it all disintegrate. The dissolution is a part of it, continuation in another form. Edges fray, things fall apart. It’s painful and a little disconcerting, but that’s what matter does. You can always play it back—just don’t be surprised if it’s transformed again, your tracks snowed over, the bread crumbs eaten. At this scale, we’re all on our own, but at least in that we’re not alone.

-Ryan Smith

Recorded in the spring, of the wood snake
in a basement, damp and cold
nose dripping, mouth breathing
eyes itching, blurred vision

to tape
Tascam 424 mkIII
two sm58s

a few long versions, with no plan
a few short versions, with no plan
woven together, intentionally

Russell played guitar and his pedals
Michael played guitar and other tape machines

Mastered by Will Killingsworth