Jordan Reyes - Sand Like Stardust - VINYL LP

Close is the debut album from American Dreams Records founder & ONO member Jordan Reyes. The album is comprised of six songs composed on modular synthesizer working in a rhythmic ambient, electronic realm - songs like InchQuicksandInch are glacial and melodic while others like InchLost MachineInch skew to the kinetic. On this album, Reyes mused on idea of sobriety, endurance, and being in a state of trance - wading deep in the patch cords of the eurorack synthesizer allowed him to reach a state of non-attachment, similar to running or biking a long distance. This kind of tunnel vision allowed him to perceive himself fading from the day-to-day and exist wholly inside the machine, becoming a more cybernetic organism.1. Avalanche 2. Dark Pool 3. Lost Machine 4. Quicksand 5. Closer 6. Penitence

The Fairchild OST and Border Land EP are works that Chicago-based Jordan Reyes conceived as two distinct projects, however, as they were written and conceived it was clear they were cut from the same kind of spiritual cloth. Faichild OST - a soundtrack commissioned for the short film by Kali Kahn - and Borderland are filled with the same kind of patient, unfolding modular synthesizer work that Reyes debuted on his 2019 album Close. According to Reyes InchSpacelessness is the central theme on Border Land, three pieces I recorded while in motel rooms on my January 2019 jaunt out to the East Coast. Motel rooms and highways are sacred spaces for me - touring alone is exhausting and transcendental. Hurtling down highways, you watch the landscape change, but are removed from it. Your environs is a purchased ecosystem. Motel rooms blend together. Even in new cities, you've inhabited that room. When you exist in these intermediary, interchangeable spaces, it can be disorienting and psychedelic, especially after long days of driving and playing shows - at the precipice, things slip, reality shifts, the unseen is more easily felt. I tried to channel that feeling while recording Border Land, feeling outside, and considering how it feels to step out or step in, deciding whether something has just finished (InchAll Things EndInch) or something is about to begin (InchTouching DownInch).

The music of Jordan Reyes, founder/owner of American Dreams Records, hones wide-ranging explorations to a fine sonic point - featuring bass, synthesizers, trombone, lap steel, choral vocal layers - moving with the instruments' notes in concert. Robert Stokowy, a German sound artist whose work exercises great restraint, treats sound as a raw material to shape into aural sculptures. Stokowy released Strife of Permanence, which filters his meticulous process through the aesthetics of black metal, on American Dreams last year; he mainly presents his work via site-specific, longform installations. On the surface these approaches couldn't seem more different. A focused collaboration between the pair would seem a challenge, if not impossible. Northern Ashroud Is My Country synthesizes their approaches into a unique whole, combining Reyes' propulsive investigations with Stokowy's patient architecture, and creating an immersive space for listeners to explore.1) I2) II3) III4) IV5) V6) VI Album Tracks 1. I 2. II 3. III 4. IV 5. V 6. VI