Notes
Album details: After three years of multiple revisions and complete deletions, 'Slow Circles' was engendered as much by the music that adheres to it than by what does not. Meaning at this point in the history of recorded music - where any- and everything can be and is available - what you leave out and avoid is just as critical as what few things remain. Still, there is much to be heard by Aquarelle (the aural moniker of Ryan Potts) on 'Slow Circles.' Tempered with static and distortion, the five extended tracks hold an illusion of stasis sourced from dozens of layers of acoustic, electric, and electronic instruments. Filtered loops overlap and repeat, erecting a pattern that links pure minimalism to an oblique and layered pop approach that unfurls with acoustic guitar, bells, and bits of percussion. Aquarelle's influences are teeming - and include various forms of photography, films by Terrence Malick, and the presence of family - but perhaps nothing inspires more than the ardor for sound itself, from hissing electronic abstraction to four-part vocal harmonies. 'Slow Circles' is his first widely available album after a handful of limited run CDR releases. Press quotes: The album's zenith is reached in the culminating, fifteen-minute "In Days of Rust" when it trudges through a neo-psychedelic dronescape filled with flickering noises and acoustic sounds (organ, guitar, percussion), ascending all the while, until it reaches a towering height that brings with it a panoramic view of the surrounding expanse. Throughout this accomplished recording, Potts shows himself to be an artful and sensitive manipulator of his materials, and his skill at effecting the transformations within the pieces helps make 'Slow Circles' stand out from it's genre brethren. -Textura, Ron Schepper Young Minnesota drone artist Ryan Potts, recording as Aquarelle, gives you full permission to be astonished... Potts' sense of timing and dynamic is remarkable here, ["In Florence"'s] big collapse and rebirth happening just when you need a lift, but lasting just long enough to remind you that beauty and peace are pleasurable only because they're impermanent. -Pitchfork, Grayson Currin While 'Circles' doesn't assault the ear, it does confront and stealthily engulf it. 'Everything Changes into Itself' opens with a shimmery, shivering hum that rustles and ruminates even as it cascades and expands in volume and depth. Thermal, incubator slosh and wonder characterize 'A Good Egg,' while the pitch-shifted tiptoe and awestruck keyboard twinkles of 'Clementine' are nothing short of breathtaking. -City Pages, Ray Cummings.
