Aaron Martin is a musician from Kansas who has released three previous solo full-lengths in addition to a number of collaborative efforts with Machinefabriek. On Worried About The Fire, Martin constructs an intimate sound world using a variety of instruments including harmonica, organ, and bowed banjo. Martin’s previous albums have been live-to-tape affairs, but Worried About The Fire utilizes editing and sound processing to great effect, enhancing Martin’s personal vision and vesting the record with a great sense of place and personality.

Not unlike its beautiful cover art, which depicts a frozen forest blanketed in snow, Worried About The Fire can be cold on the surface, leading the listener to believe they are headed for one of those formless and faceless abstract electronic workouts of which there are far too many examples these days. As the record unfolds like a perfectly constructed experimental film, however — dripping with atmosphere, never tedious — Martin quickly allays such fears; indeed, he originally conceived it as a soundtrack to a short movie.

Beginning with warm, acoustic sounds — such as on standout track “Open Knife” — the record slowly transforms into a noisier, more processed affair, highlighted by the superb “Wires of Glass.” Worried About The Fire is one of the more compelling experimental records I’ve heard lately and invites favorable comparisons to the work of Richard Skelton, among others. Aaron Martin has crafted a distinct, meticulously crafted dispatch from the American underground. Worried About The Fire is an abstract record with heart.

Arron Martin, “Open Knife” (Worried About The Fire, Experimedia, 2010)

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Words: Max Burke

Worried About The Fire is available now from Experimedia. Label head Jeremy Bible (who did the design and photography for Worried About The Fire) also has an excellent distro section which features selections of the best international experimental music and often stocks rare titles that have long disappeared from other outlets.

Tags: Aaron Martin, Open Knife, Worried About The Fire

This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 4:16 pm and is filed under Sightings, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.