Album Review: And They Turned Not When They Went by Imbogodom

Spooky, the roaring of this stethoscope: a sort of inverse-Necks, Imbogodom compress sprawling ideas into dense pieces, their instructive interview with John Crowell disclosing how they submit their own studio recordings to the psychedelic stochastics of tape manipulation in a recursive loop of making and listening. What is manipulated is the real, rather than the symbolic, producing what Kittler might have called “a strange and unheard-of silver noise… the voice of the listener who makes no sound and is nonetheless supposed to sing once all the conditions of magic have been met”: on “I Am Here, I Am Gone” and “Slate Grey Light,” Alexander Tucker is precisely this silent listener, incanting along with the studio magic of co-conspirator Daniel Beban: winds slowed to inhuman yawns; strings scrambled into Twombly scrawls; stabs of Tucker’s voice, slowed and sped-up, bleeding through a reverb gauze. Chopped and screwed? More slurred and slewed.

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Imbogodom's music can feel like walking inside a strange house at night and finding yourself momentarily startled by the sound of your own breath. Equal parts psych-folk songsmithery and musique concrète, the project came together when New Zealand's Daniel Beban, a multi-instrumentalist and tape artist, was chalking and splicing tape for a living at the BBC World Service. Intrigued by some discarded reel-to-reel tape machines he uncovered inside the station's studios, he began building compositions out of tape loops, and invited his guitarist friend Alexander Tucker to come jam.

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A latent aim exists within all recorded music to transport the listener. Because of its synthetic nature, the commitment of sound to vinyl, tape, or disk creates unrealities of varying artifice and scope. Since the mainstream adoption of the gramophone in the early part of the 20th century, composers have been writing specifically with the record, rather than the music hall, in mind, resulting in a foregrounding of production as a craft in and of itself.

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The members of U.K. band Imbogodom created an almost interactive experience with And They Turned Not When They Went. By using the live feeds from different locations, including Big Ben and the Houses Of Parliament, Alexander Tucker and Daniel Beban give us a peak at the conversations they had and the objects they touched for a better understanding of this album’s creation story.

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