No surprise that I’m back on the Florida tip. These two just can’t do wrong in my book. Weather it’s in solo form or collaborative, Jeff and Kane are just steady mining that lo-fi drone and always coming up with some glistening nugget or another. Between their shambling synths, guitar exploration, and instantly nostalgic ‘field recordings’, the amalgam they concoct is a sure pleaser for this listener.

A small excerpt from a review I recently wrote for “Ashes Wander” …

I’m not exactly unbiased when I pop in the latest culling of ear candy from Florida’s Jeff Astin and Kane Pour, collectively known as Tricorn and Queue. The two have been doing this collaborative thing for a few good years now, and it seems that while they sift and winnow through the basket that is their shared musical mind, each extraction–usually manifesting itself in the form of cassette–is a different perspective on these guys’ perception of the musical experience. So I hope I don’t need an excuse to be excited about this latest tape, “Ashes Wander”. The icing on the cake-ophony is that the tape is released by one of the finest weirdo labels in business, Stunned Records. Between the gorgeous artwork and visual production, and the all-too-sweet samplings of lo-fi meanderings, I’m in a weird and grainy wonderland, vibrant cherry goo stuck to the soles of my feet and granules of sugar encrusted within the strands of my hair.

…

Perhaps it’s simply the recency speaking, but “Ashes Wander” is very possibly my favorite Tricorn and Queue to date. This cassette is only subtly diverse in mood, but who can ever know just what bells and whistles Jeff and Kane are putting to work behind the curtain? The array of obscure sounds is vast, and even the recognizable orchestration on “Ashes Wander” is used carefully and appropriately. But crowning this work is of course the texture of atmosphere with which Tricorn and Queue are so skilled. “Ashes Wander” is hazier than anything you’ve ever heard. No note escapes the murk and at least half of all notes are pushed into the red. There is an innate ‘taped’ quality about this cassette. But that being the case, there is very little hiss; amazingly, Jeff and Kane have removed the pit from this sweet fruit of an album, and left us with only the best part–a pristine haze and a syrupy musical concoction in which we can drown ourselves.

Tricorn and Queue: “Ashes Wander 01″
Stunned Records (2009)

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Certainly neither of these guys needs any kind of introduction, but for the sake of dispensation of my time and my tendency toward thoroughness, Mist is John Elliott (of Emeralds, Outer Space, Imaginary Softwoods, among others) and Sam Goldberg (of Pizza Night tapes and a few other obscure collaborative projects). Mist is in fact a bit obscure an incarnation, but considering that Amethyst Sunset just pressed 500 copies of the duo’s debut LP, I think it’s safe to assume that Mist will not be abiding in obscurity for much longer.

The LP is comprised of one side-long track (the A-side), and 5 shorter tracks (B-side). While the A-side’s “Taking the Mist” is a rather minimal excursion in which frantic synthesizer polyrhythms are often stripped down to what seems to be a single instrument. The piece is maybe longer than I’d initially desire it to be, but then inside that lull during which I’m wondering, “How long is this track,” is where I find exactly what charm there is in such an approach. I can start to focus on the music, since the time for “experiencing it” has been surpassed. Really a wonderful exercise in control from John and Sam.

The B-side’s shorter pieces are every bit as enjoyable as the A-side, but the tracks are maybe what I’d call “samples” of music. I picture the two musicians poised over their machines, playing these iterative jams for maybe as long as an hour, because as entrancing as music is when you’re the listener, it’s tenfold that when you are the creator. So take five hour-long explorations of hypnotic synth-music and turn them into a few three or four minute excavations. These are distillations, extracts. The most potent parts of what I envision as hours of playing, brought down to one 20-minute chunk. For the sake of convenience, I appreciate this reduction.

A treasure of synth-music, undoubtedly. Mist might be rather obscure now, but I feel like the 500 copies of this album will be spoken for within a few months. I hope to see more production like this from Elliott and Goldberg!