Igloomag.com reviews “Skeleton Taxa” by Damian Valles
Musician, artist and greengrocer Damian Valles enjoyed a bumper year in 2011 (highlighted by the birth of a healthy baby boy). He released two mini-CDs, a full-length, and rounded off his stint as curator of the admirable “Rural Route” mini-CD series. Most of the entries in said series can be characterized as ambient, as can his three-inch releases. Old Tin Will Cry (Twisted Tree) is divided into two parts, the first of which, “Cold Working,” goes round and round in pleasant circles like a finger in the snow. The second, “Phase Transition,” lifts the gaze upward to take in the green metallic sheen of northern lights in dub, their echo thrown back by the pure white surface underfoot. The Waves That Destroy (Hibernate) is a single, twenty-minute piece, and it is the one that actually sounds like old tin crying, or at least having tears well up in its eyes in the bitter cold. Valles expands the drone to orchestral proportions, as his field recordings, small bells, piano and guitar are all swept up into a string section, with a violin swirling out of the mass to solo half-way through before receding. The entire piece is far from destructive, but is rich in drama. Skeleton Taxa is far from ambient, as it is too chock full of distractions to be undistracting—of hazy Byzantine ritual (“Ascent of the Past”), of lonesome nights hunkered down by the HAM radio in northern woods, of big-city minimalism (“Nightengale Floors”), attic-dusty country blues records, lavish quasi-exotica (“With a Lark’s Tongue End”), a dour, skirling dirge (“Elegant Skull”). It even features a song, “Bell and Arc,” sung by his wife Heidi Hazelton. With a voice sharing some of the lilt of Annie Haslam and with Valles’ lush arrangement, it calls to mind Renaissance, the British progressive rock band. It is an aural curiousity cabinet, the whole somehow greater than the sum of its parts (for there are a few pieces of fool’s gold among the gems). The ear enjoys wandering over it. original article
Textura reviews Damian Valles “Skeleton Taxa”
Currently residing in the Kawartha region east of Toronto, Ontario, Damian Valles has toiled in his share of bands—punk, post-hardcore, math rock, and otherwise—during the last decade. The past couple of years, however, have found him concentrating on solo recordings and establishing himself within the experimental ambient-soundscaping community. And though Skeleton Taxa is his seventh release to date, it’s formally his first proper full-length CD, as the recordings issued before were CD-Rs, a cassette, two netlabel releases, and compilation appearances. Two things stand out right away: the relative concision of Skeleton Taxa’s twelve pieces (with one exception, all are in the two- to four-minute range), and, secondly, the stylistic variety of the material. Despite the contrast instated by the latter and the fact that the album’s a patchwork of sorts (in his own words, “Some of the tracks have been sitting dormant for months to years, some are reworked tracks from a previous life, and some are fresh out of the box”), Skeleton Taxa nonetheless ends up sounding like a cohesive collection, perhaps due to the omnipresent guitar. In addition, one is struck by the number of pieces that favour a format closer in spirit to conventional song structure than open-ended drone or meditation. The album gets off to an auspicious start with “Bones Made Out of Bone,” a rustic setting that sounds like it was recorded at a forest cabin, with nature sounds seeping in amongst the scrapes and primitive instrument sounds. The tremolo twang of “Storm Doors” follows, with drama created by ringing cymbal patterns and an insistent, metronomic pulse. Adding to the material’s textural character, voice samples and field recordings are threaded into the pieces, such as when orchestral elements and what sounds like a doctor’s voice appear within “Calavera.” A few less structured pieces appear, including “Taxa,” a spikey guitar and piano exploration, and “Calacas,” a sound collage of acoustic guitar flutter, found sounds, and voices. There’s a legato character to his guitar playing in “Nightengale Floors” that evokes the fluidity of jazz guitar, while the slow plains drift of “With a Lark’s Tongue End” is presumedly Valles’ nod to King Crimson’s 1973 opus Larks’ Tongue in Aspic. Though Skeleton Taxa comes to a strong close with “Elegant Skull,” a spectral meditation speckled with scrapes and kalimba plucks, the album’s most entrancing piece is “Bell and Arc,” primarily due to the inclusion of a haunting vocal by Damian’s wife, Heidi Hazelton. Clearly the result suggests that Valles might want to consider incorporating her vocal presence to a greater degree in the future. For the time being, Skeleton Taxa provides a comprehensive portrait of his many strengths and the ease with which he’s able to adapt to different contexts.