Circulatory System - Mosaics Within Mosaics

Die erste Vorladung (VII)

Personalien:

Hinter Circulatory System steckt ein Musikerkollektiv rund um den Songwriter und bildenden Künstler Will Cullen Hart.

Tathergang:

Hurt ist Mitbegründer von The Elephant 6 Recording Company, die seit 1991 zahlreiche Bands wie The Apples In Stereo, The Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel oder Beulah versammeln, die alle ihre Liebe zum 60er Jahre Psychedelic Pop eint.

Nach dem zwischenzeitlichen Aus für The Olivia Tremor Control gründete Will Cullen Hurt mit einigen ehemaligen Mitstreitern das Ensemble Circulatory System, das seit 2001 drei Alben veröffentlicht hat. Das Doppelalbum "Mosaics Within Mosaics" erschien bei Cloud Recordings, läuft insgesamt eine Stunde und versammelt 31 Songs bzw. Songfragmente und Zwischenspiele.

Diese beruhen auf Aufnahmen, die Hurt im Verlauf der letzten 12 Jahre getätigt hat. Unterstützt wurde er auf "Mosaics Within Mosaics" von Derek Almstead (Faster Circuits), John Fernandes (The Olivia Tremor Control, Dream Boat, Jacob Morris, The New Sound of Numbers, Old Smokey), Heather McIntosh (The Instruments), AJ Griffin (Laminated Cat), Peter Erchick (The Olivia Tremor Control, Pipes You See, Pipes You Don't) und Jeff Mangum & Jeremy Barnes (Neutral Milk Hotel).    

Plädoyer:

Soundschnipsel, Field Recordings, Klangexperimente und zwischendurch immer wieder eine Psychedelic-Pop-Perle, wie aus dem Nachlass von The Beatles oder The Beach Boys. Ähnlich wie bei "Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume One" (1999, 27 Titel) von The Olivia Tremor Control gibt es hier immer wiederkehrende Bausteine, diesmal Mosaike in 8 Teilen ("Mosaic #1" dauert 4:24 Minuten, "Mosaic #6" nur 37 Sekunden), die dem versponnen, vielschichtigen Album jedoch auch keine Struktur geben können. 

Was wäre das für ein Album, wenn jemand Hurt bei der Hand nehmen, zehn Songs (zum Beispiel "If You Think About It Now", "The Reasons Before You Knew", "Conclusions" oder "Open Up Your Lives") aus diesem Sammelsurium auswählen und diese über die Ein- oder Zwei-Minuten-Marke hinaus ausdehnen würde!?  

Zeugen:

The key to Mosaics Within Mosaics, however, is that wherever the rough edge of one suite of enjoined, warping miniatures might end, another fits directly into it, an interlocking cosmos of mosaic orbs. Sure, within each ellipse, a wobbly picture emerges. “If You Think About It Now” rings with classic “White Album” psych pop via pastel-painted Fiery Furnaces ease, vocals smeared and soft, the sonic field deep and mutable. The watery beach swoon and acoustic push of “Tiny Planes on Canvas” organically transitions into into “Mosaic #2″, an organic-electric symphony piece coming from some retro-sci-fi music box.

Even when pieces twitch out of their pretty framework (the sleepy “When You’re Small” skronks out of existence after a brief two minutes), these blips blend their way back into the mix almost immediately. The epic “Stars and Molecules” does all that in one track, moving from radiation-burnt radio signals to lush harmonies, then surfy sway, then balmy, bongo-driven guitar chopping, all before bursting back out into space. “If you’re waiting on some other world, it won’t be too long,” Hart lilts through a fog, bringing the journey into focus.

Many times when reaching out to grab onto a particularly appealing melody or sound, it’ll flit away like a puff of cotton caught on a strong wind — the 52-second “Puffs of Cotton” enforces that quite nicely. The fact that Hart pieced together the album’s 31 tracks and hour runtime from recordings made over the past 12 years, featuring contributions from a wide range of pals including Jeff Mangum and Jeremy Barnes of Neutral Milk Hotel, is both telling and bewildering, a true testament to his vision.

His ability to fuse these too-brief passages makes their too-brief nature that much more beautiful, the brevity of each moment that much more palpable. “There’s just so much love/ There’s just so much hate/ There’s just so much mixed-up conclusions,” Hart croons on highlight “Conclusions”. “We better ask ourselves just what went wrong or right.” Mosaics Within Mosaics, much like life, will float past you in a complicated, blur, but there are so many important, beautiful moments to learn from when you let them, rather than trying to pin them down.
(Consequence Of Sound)

Opener "Physical Mirage/Visible Magic" finds a wobbly-voiced Hart shakily declaring this a "perfectly normal day", and by the time the utterly gorgeous closer "Elastic Empire Coronation" rolls around, he's in full voice, joined by his friends in a kind of declaration of weirdo solidarity: "If you don't believe us, we can slip on by." There are plenty of wonky, wriggling psych-pop tunes to be found amidst Mosaics' endless refractions: spiny and somewhat somber "Bakery Spires" is an ear-pricker of the highest order, as is "Night Falls", a kind of a doo-wop song sung from a vibrating hotel bed. But there's no "Yesterday's World" here, no head-and-shoulders highlight to be had, which gives Mosaics its feel of constant transformation. It's not a record about individual moments; it's about how those moments play off of each other, balance each other out, continue to delight and disorient. With some big pop blowout to look forward to, each listen feels different, the order seemingly shuffled and the arrangements reconfigured. It's possible to  listen to Mosaics 100 times and never quite hear the same record twice.
(Pitchfork)

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