The Department of Harmonic Integrity – ‘In Deck and Depth, a Whim, a Weft’

Nebraska’s Tymbal Tapes imprint spun up in the first third of this year, storming out of the gates with a three-tape batch featuring the mysterious Peter Kris of German Army fame, Romanian-American writer Peter Moscovich, and the dueling synthesizers of The Department of Harmonic Integrity. The label has added another four paragraphs to their already stellar treatise, but I’d like to focus on one specific entry from their debut run, the bone-chilling paeans of The Department’s In Deck and Depth, a Whim, a Weft. This relatively nascent organization, which is composed of two individuals who reside on opposite corners of the United States, demonstrates the sonic aspects of gut-twisting tension and startling release — sometimes doing so simultaneously: the tunes are equal parts library music and sheer cacophony. Both Min Roach and Wayne Longer (Adderall Canyonly, Oxykitten) reside in Portland, the former in Maine and the latter in Oregon, and both eject sparkle-ridden trails of synthetic bliss from their electronic rigs. Twisted arpeggios are paraded before thick beams of tone that are wrapped into textured soundscapes that can and will masquerade as backdrops for giallo film murder sequences or psychedelic space vehicle chase scenarios. Yet there are sinister elements that prevent these tracks from being straightforward synthetic tunesmithery: the howling noise of “Limbs +” and the mammoth drones of “The Ouudan” are just a couple examples of this phenomenon. At any rate, the music is gargantuan in the way it completely overtakes the listener’s sensory abilities, flooding the mind with bizarre imagery.

Alas, these sounds are no longer available via their physical carrier medium (magnetic tape), but may be acquired digitallybfrom the Tymbal Tapes Bandcamp.