Ben Seretan & John Thayer - Sunbeam of No Illusion LP (Classic Black)

Tracklist:

1. + + (Double Positive)
2. Memory Garden
3. Ink Dark Moon
4. Watermelon Well
5. Little Winds
6. Field Notes #1
7. Wild Mint Breeze
8. Field Notes #2
9. Valley Spirit
10. Stradella Bass System
11. Peat Fire

Sunbeam of No Illusion is Thayer and Seretan’s first official collaboration on record, though they’ve performed together in a wide variety of contexts since 2023. Drawing on the resplendent natural world of their shared home of upstate New York, the pair calls forth the specters of the valley, spinning up an offering that's frequently sublime and often a little sorrowful. 

Imperfections, signal noise, ground buzz, blips, plonks, glitches, and stutters accrete over clumsy, delicate loops of Fender Rhodes piano, accumulating into something that evocatively emulates the sparkling white noise of water or the calm swell of a breeze. Sunbeam is a fine slice of hyperreality, a nuanced, BGM-inflected postmodern pastoral that's a heady blend of Yoshimura, Fennesz, Badalamenti, and Harold Budd. The poet Richard Brautigan dreamed of a cybernetic forest, computers in the trees - here the wind is digital, trees rustling in binary. At peace with change and permeability, the metal resonance and electrical impulses of the Rhodes hum in the field of the studio as the Earth orbits the sun, an imperfect looping.

Music by Ben Seretan & John Thayer
Produced by John Thayer

BS: Fender Rhodes Piano, Moog Matriarch, Juno 106, Supro Lap Steel, Lowrey Organ, Teenage Engineering KOII, Electric Guitar, Guitar Pedals (Assorted)

JT: Lexicon Prime Time, Delta Labs Effectron II, Crystal Rattles, Temple Block, Brushes, Grass Shakers, Field Recordings, Digitakt, Modular Synthesizer, Tape Echo, Tascam Porta Studio

Recorded & Mixed by John Thayer at Friendly Gain

Mastered by Josh Bonati

Album cover artwork detail from “Anthology” by Lydia Kern
Photography by Daniel J. Cardon

AKP044