Last night I stood in a living room in Davis, CA, watching Alan Watts—as a duo of Jeremy Krinsley and Mike Sheffield—hunched over controllers and push-button machines, while Aa's John Atkinson stood in the foreground with various colored lights and strobes on strings that he danced with to a room entirely unready for an “experience”. This is not the guaranteed Alan Watts experience, but as Godmode's Nick Sylvester is quick to indicate, Alan Watts seperate from the herd of industrial techno dub manipulators by never giving the same performance twice.
Alan Watts recorded its upcoming Ara cassette as a three piece, incorporating the bass of Patrick Stankard, which gives the group an added element of discovery, falter, and recovery that endears them as creators in a static genre. As industrial and imposing as a track like “920” can feel, Alan Watts insist on letting their human mistakes remain in the textures. Recorded at Silent Barn with Sylvester, Ara is the product of live takes in which no master clock aids the soundmen, they operate on an understanding that is entirely relient on the seeking of synchrinocity—even Stankard refuses to loop his bass lines as a show of solidarity.
Alan Watts' Ara LP is out March 4 on Godmode.
