rotations

The field of electric guitar ambience — feedback and tones played, looped, treated, and more — is now its own well-established tradition, from the early experiments of Robert Fripp and Brian Eno to any number of later drone artists. Michael Walton’s formal debut under the MWVM moniker is as a result familiar rather than something strikingly new, but Rotations is nonetheless a lovely effort all around, showing good skills in performing and arranging and signaling a promising future. Notably, in an era of extremely clean home-recording possibilities, Walton keeps the tape hiss in, much like Dave Pearce, a partial sonic forebear, did with Flying Saucer Attack. “Context. Where?,” the excellent opener, captures that as well as Walton’s knack for meditative but triumphant arrangements — if so many such compositions can feel like a warm sunrise, this feels like an enveloping one. It makes further sense that the following song would be called “Fireside,” since again there’s a sense of embracing comfort in the high, slow swirl of tones — there’s little overtly dark-as-such in Walton’s work, no deep howling drones, but instead a chilled contemplation that emphasizes serenity. “Celestial Motion,” with its back-and-forth collage touched with what sounds like a heavenly choir of ghosts, might be the pinnacle of this part of the album, while “Windows” plays up a piercing microsecond shriek as the swells rise and fall without disrupting the mood. There’s also some dry humor at play — a brief, moodier number is called “It’s Easy to Be Miserable.” – Ned Raggett