Description
Stills Lit Through offers the first comprehensive body of work from musician and visual artist Tallesen.
Hailing from the Hudson Valley of New York, Tallesen - born Cayman Johnson - describes Stills as a response to the continuous flexibility of the physical setting by the additive of sound. A reference to his joyful erasure of the distinction between music and experience.
The twelve songs of Stills Lit Through conjure an eidolon of melodies painted with watercolor brushstrokes both calm and frenetic. To our ears, this closely characterizes Johnson's work as a visual artist.
The collection when taken as a whole is wonderfully consistent. We hear echoes of Autechre's corporeal maneuvers (bass as lead voice, plasticity of foreground vs. background), but, if you dig out the provenance of Johnson's nom de plume, you really start to understand how the melodic through-lines of the record operate on a more illustrative level.