Marc Barreca, "Bellows" (Palace of Lights)
How many bankruptcy judges do you know who also create excellent ambient music? Zero? Well, you need to remedy that by exploring the still-growing catalog of Seattle musician Marc Barreca. A key figure in Seattle's strong electronic-music scene of the '70s and '80s as a member of Young Scientist and Savant, as well as a solo artist, Barreca has had a late-career resurgence after many years of focusing on his important day job. Buoyed by reissues of his works by labels such as Freedom to Spend, Vinyl-on-Demand, and collaborator K. Leimer's Palace of Lights, Barreca has come back strong this decade with 10 albums that further cement his reputation as a producer of complexly serene and texturally tantalizing soundscapes.
Barreca's latest full-length, From the Gray and the Green, is a highly evocative sonic portrait of Pacific Northwestern nature in all its muted splendor, teasing out those titular colors with a scientific rigor. In the press notes, Barreca noted that his aim with this album "was to create immersive, evolving landscapes shaped by a dynamic past and viewed as if through the translucence of passing clouds." That he does.
"Bellows" is perhaps the most tonally vivid track on the disc, a beautiful cosmic-pastoral palimpsest of folk guitar twanging and droning over a burbling synth brook—or maybe Robby Krieger's languid guitar spangles from the Doors' "The End" atomized into a tranquil audio bubble bath. Whatever the case, it exerts a much-needed calming force in the wake of Mitch McConnell's noxious appearance on Fox News last night.
Marc Barreca performs Saturday, January 4 at Chapel Performance Space with Young Scientist.