Praise Bob Petric: Reviews Of Recent Releases By Local Bands, Pt. 114

Ley Lines - This Rock In My Kitchen Used To Have A Purpose - Sonnedecker Records - 3 songs - cassette, digital

As I've openly admitted before, I'm not a huge fan of freeform improvisational music for the most part (a category which Ley Lines definitely falls under), but I can appreciate it when it's well done and has some evidence of care put into it (see my review of Leaking from about a month ago– a group which also features Ley Lines' guitarist Noah Depew). This is not that. "Screen Damage" is aimless noodling for an aimless amount of time and goes absolutely nowhere. I would say that "Non-Essential" lives up to its title other than that would be the kind of tired joke people probably expect of me and that it's actually the most interesting track here. It's a very quiet one, with a vaguely eerie vibe provided by a far away noise that kind of sounds like a church bell but eventually turns out to be a guitar. There's a brief moment as well where there's a metallic rattling noise that sounds like a pull chain being dragged around a bowl. Those mildly interesting details aside, it also goes on far too long and nothing happens in it. "Peer-to-Peer Performance" is more undefined wandering that takes forever to start and even then you can barely call it a start. Eventually, something resembling music creeps in, with Noah playing a repetitive two-chord progression accented by Jayson Gerycz rolling the cymbals. Before this can build into anything cool, however, Jayson goes off into his own world again with little regard for any kind of structure or even interplay between musicians and the whole thing just devolves again– and that's the real problem here. For something like this to work well, there really has to be some aural evidence to the listener that the musicians are working together towards something, even if it is free improvisation. I don't hear it here. Both Noah and Jayson come up with some interesting things here and there on this tape, but instead of playing off one another it largely sounds like they're each only listening to themselves. I don't question either of their skills as musicians–- as show-offy as I may find Jayson's playing to be, I would never deny that he's a very good drummer. And Noah is an excellent musician as well–- given what I've seen and heard him play on a variety of instruments and in a variety of contexts over the years, I think that's absolutely unquestionable. He's really, really good. However, none of that comes through in this project. And maybe what's most weird about it to me is that both of them are definitely capable of making interesting music in the freeform improvisational context– I've seen both of them do it (and again, read my Leaking review for recent evidence that I do genuinely believe Noah knows what he's doing and also that he hasn't just lost his touch or something). That can't be found here, however. This sounds like a warmup rather than the actual content. And another thing: I looked up 'Ley Lines Bandcamp' to get the correct URL to put here and I couldn't even find it because too many other things came up with that or a similar name; I actually had to type out the title of this thing to find the right page. There's a saxophonist credited on here but I couldn't make out any saxophone on here. What gives? 1/5

(sonnedecker.bandcamp.com)