Album Review: equilet - late corrections
Album Review: equilet - late correction LP
June 25, 2021
Brennan Ko
An inspired release graces the catalogue of San Francisco label Silva Electronics
If you wanted to know the TL;DR of late correction by equilet, the latest release to grace San Francisco label Silva Electronics, it would read something like,
“hazy tape saturated electronic beats and soundscapes.”
But leaving such an interesting album with such a short description would be criminal and I don’t feel like going to journalist jail. So grab your best set of headphones and strap yourselves in for another one of my one-hundred percent accurate and grammatically perfect album reviews.
All jokes aside, Silva Electronics - the label run by Sutro FM creator, DJ, and producer Michael Claus - has one of the best ears for scouting out exciting lesser known electronic music producers. The latest to grace its roster is the artist equilet (yes, the name is not capitalized). With the nine tracks across late correction, equilet delivers an album that invites listeners to quit multitasking and take a moment for some introspection. The overall feeling is mysterious, self described as,
“Sacred invocations of past memories and forgotten data via sound that is as metallic and cold as it is nostalgically warm.”
Other parts sound like you’ve arrived at a fantastical secret garden located on the seafloor of a shallow sea. If that is your kind of vibe make sure to check out the track “Cityside”.
Sweeping synth pads soaked in reverb drench each track while bouncing and bubbling bass and lead lines bring tracks like “Let’s Go (tribute to Johnny Igaz)” to a boil. In terms of energy, the whole album feels like it is building to this track after which we ease back into mellow territory. Or as the album notes put it, “An aural schematic for the peripheral beyond that which is within and without.” That’s some deeply philosophical musings for an album of bleeps & bloops made by machines but I am not one to disagree, especially after the year we all just experienced. In fact, the “peripheral beyond that which is within and without,” is probably the perfect description of me trying to ignore things I wish weren’t real, while getting overly anxious over hypotheticals. Hmm…
The album can be purchased on Bandcamp and includes the option of having the album on cassette, which probably compliments the album with that classic tape saturation.
If I haven’t managed to pique your interest then perhaps some words from the artist themselves will do the trick. Check out this brief interview with equilet!
Interview w/equliet
Interview edited for length and clarity
Where did you grow up and where do you currently live? Where do you see yourself living in 10 years?
I grew up in Kansas and Missouri; I came here initially to attend Mills College and get a job related to media programming.
I'm in Oakland; here since 2002. I've lived in different areas around the bay, but mostly Oakland.
In 10 years I could see myself living somewhere else; the bay's been great but it's a big world.
For this release, did you have an overarching theme or idea that ties all the tracks together? What are your intentions for this release?
I worked with infamous label boss Michael Claus to consider which tracks seemed to fit together. I had some initial ideas, but he asked me to send him a bunch of stuff that we could use as a conversation about the album. I think it worked nicely that way, because it was more about Silva and me getting to know each other in the process of selection, rather than having a pre-fab idea about what SE "should be" putting out. That said, I think the intention is to explore what happens when one leaves everything until the very last minute.
Why did you decide to release with Silva Electronics and what makes it a good fit for your music?
I've been a fan of Michael's music for a long time. I reached out to OUTPOST (SF) around 4 years ago because I saw that he was working with CM-4 on the label (for those who don't know, OUTPOST is a label created back in 2014 with Nackt, the late Johnny Igaz). In terms of projects that Johnny had been involved in music-wise, I really dug it. The mixes, release series, and events... I felt a lot of great energy there. Before the Ghost Ship fire, I'd spoken with Johnny about releasing something with him, but the fire took him from us first.
I'd made this track dedicated to him, based on his last FB post before he played that event (which I nearly attended). It's titled "Let's Go" and is on SE10 in his memory. That was an initial talking point for us back then, and many days I still think is the thread that drove the release on SE, and our friendship. For me, there's this sacred energy from people we've known and care about that we're able to share in their transcendence. I feel this about my former professor Pauline Oliveros, my first mentor Carl Kurtz, and my former director at CNMAT, David Wessel.
If I had 1/10th of the energy these folks had in their 70s I'd need sedatives. I guess I try to pass on these stories and the legacy, and Michael thought it would be a good fit.
How did you get into making music and what are your motivations for creating music?
I was 3 when my parents bought me a violin and got me going in Suzuki method, which focuses on ear training over notation. I don't know if the experience changed me in a particular way, but I remember how natural it felt to use hearing to learn music rather than studying scores. Suzuki required some sight reading, but it took a back seat to intuition. I think that's stuck with me since.
I played piano for some years after that, then got into the guitar around high school. In '93 I wanted to learn more about the fx pedals I had access to in KC, and got interested in some digital models. I guess this was my first exposure to music technology aside from tape experiments when I was younger. Then in '97 I attended art school at [the] Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI), where music became something I'd do when I needed a break from "New Media" practice.
By the time I was graduating KCAI, I was … [getting] into Max/MSP. There were other synthesis languages around then (buzz, jmax, pd, csound, sc, etc), but I didn't really know about them, and because I'd used a Mac for so long for visual work, it made sense to check it out. It really stuck, and eventually this new world that'd opened up lead [sic] me to Mills College to learn more at the Center for Contemporary Music.
Some time after Mills, I inquired about some research at UC Berkeley, as my advisor had been telling me I needed to be introduced to this research group in Berkeley called "CNMAT", aka The Center for New Music and Audio Technologies. This was the beginning of my 12 years at CNMAT as a researcher. CNMAT is an incredible place and taught me about intersections of academic disciplines as they relate to music. If anything, it's probably one of the reasons I can't stop thinking about music after all this time.
So I think that my more technical work feeds my interest in making music more intuitively, and the intuition that I started out with helps me use technology to keep it moving.
What are you doing when you aren't making music? Where is the most likely place for someone to run into you?
- I like cooking, making visual art, programming, helping others, and enduring pandemics.
- Hm; places people might run into me... Just let me know where and what time! :)
Brennan Ko is the Editor for Fault Radio and member of the Oakland photo collective &TheOthers. You can find him collecting records, busting moves on the dancefloor, reading and writing about art and its sub-cultures, and being an absolute nerd.