Amelioration by Oliver Kearns

'Amelioration' is a stunning collection of skewed dream states from Oliver Kearns. Scenes are conjured from oceanic washes, murmuring ghosts and disembodied croon drifting patiently from half-light solitude to nocturnal claustrophobia with its curious sonic signatures underpinned by minimal bass tones, creeping static and sparse cymbal work.

A pan-continental space to inhabit across its 67 minute run time as you try to catch a brief glimpse of something passing or a memory collapsing in on itself the more you try to focus your mind...

Can you remember how the dream began anymore?


Oliver Kearns is a pianist and sound recordist currently based in Bristol. He began making music as a kid, using found materials in the Scottish countryside where he grew up. It's this attitude of looking for things to sculpt into sound that continues to shape his work.

Amelioration grew out of an interest in making music in the spirit of certain painters who build layers on top of one another, scrubbing parts off and working with what remains.

The idea developed of writing songs that would only ever be heard as scraps, rearranged into new pieces inspired by these paintings.

In time this overlapped with a second love: pastoral and free jazz of the 1970s and '80s. The percussion on these records draws a real sense of space through rhythm, and that atmosphere enfolds the music here.

The album title is more a question than anything else - progress is such a tainted idea, but it's hard to think of an alternative for reaching a better place. Music might offer one way to start filling this in, not by going forward, but over itself and back again - a looping tendril...


REVIEWS
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"An album that completely washes over you, before slowly revealing its depth and variety. The space within its ambience is made real by free jazz inspired drumming."
NORMAN RECORDS
https://www.normanrecords.com/records/173947-oliver-kearns-amelioration

"There is just a way about these sounds. They feel minimal, but like they could fill an entire room at the same time. I imagine this being played in one of those giant theaters where they have a huge stage and all of the seating is outdoors. In many ways this just feels too big of a sound to be contained. It gets quieter now, becomes reduced almost to nothing, yet still remains so powerfully moving."
Joshua Macala, RAISED BY CASSETTES
https://raisedbycassettes.blogspot.com/2019/08/cassette-review-oliver-kearns.html

A small and lovingly curated cassette & CD-R label based in Bristol, UK. Founded and run by Liam McConaghy since 2016 and encompassing an ever-expanding array of sounds from the worlds of ambient, drone, noise, free-improv, mutant techno, musique concrète and beyond...

*The background and header images on this page are from artwork by Louise Brady

**The logo was designed by Ian McConaghy

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