SoulWhirlingSomewhere

SoulWhirlingSomewhere
Everyone Will Eventually Leave You
Projekt, 1995

SoulWhirlingSomewhere is the vehicle for musical creation operated by one Michael Plaster, hailing from the barren landscapes of the state of Arizona. The music he makes dwells in the ethereal realms of the darkwave spectrum, applying lush keyboard atmospherics and acoustic guitars as a common foundation for each composition, frequently washing the sound in heavy effects to provide the music a dreamy, floating essence. Everyone Will Eventually Leave You is the sophomore full-length recording of SoulWhirlingSomewhere, and as such, logically develops from the electronic introspection of debut effort, Eating The Sea.

This development is found in songs that flow with more cohesion, and healthier familiarity with recording techniques to bring out the subtleties of sound which contribute heavily to the effectiveness of this music. The clear emphasis here for Plaster is to build atmosphere that intensifies in presence to lather the listener in enveloping daydream-swirl where time is suspended and the reality of everything that surrounds is vanquished for a moment. Songs evolve in gradual dramatic sequence of rise-and-fall dynamic seeking to reflect human emotional currents, and this is best achieved in "A Mouse In The Mouth", when Plaster allows the song to take on a life of its own, exposing itself in the nakedness that results from pure catharsis. Elsewhere, as in the swirling ethereal bliss of "Sealing", a more direct approach is employed where strumming acoustic guitars and airy vortex of keyboards intertwine with Plaster’s gliding vocals. His singing is unpolished, aching and at times flat and off-key, and these apparent "flaws", which transfer to the instrumentation as well, mirror the fragility born of inadequate disposition filling up any empty space between human relationships.

"your hands are as lifeless
as the ground i will lay my body in"

This music hangs in the air to precipitate like rainfall through gleaming rays of new sunlight in the early hours of dawn. Plaster’s ability to freeze frame effortlessly overlooked fragments of life and magnify them in analytical obsession in a single passage separates SoulWhirlingSomewhere from mere soundscape music. Balanced within this expression as an indicator of where the committed listener will be taken, are remnants of time reversed in flashback reach to reexamination of where this all begins, to steal a breath from a memory and speak an unspoken word. The distant sadness of this music is imbued with prestige that wholly embraces heartache of the ages, and even through this lush solace of sound sets the weight of beautiful burden in what it means to feel removed and put to the test of what one can handle. With the tint of awakening to new realizations and old hopes, Everyone Will Eventually Leave You unfolds in the discovery of harmony amongst the ruins of soul affliction.

A.M.D.
5/1/05

Tracklisting:

1. Opening The Ten-End
2. When I Dream I Fall I Hit 2
3. A Mouse In The Mouth
4. Sealing
5. 5 Days & The Mind’s Erased
6. Soaked And Captured
7. Balanced In Perfect Amber
8. The Raining Welt/Copper Eyes
9. When Finger And Palm Was All
10. Sun
11. When I Dream I Fall I Hit
12. Everything Starts And Everything Ends In October

SoulWhirlingSomewhere
Hope Was
Projekt, 1998

"I will never let go"

For his third SoulWhirlingSomewhere full-length, Michael Plaster has taken on the bewildering disorientation of heartache in the form of death of shared love in the passion of human affection as thematic concept. Reaching beyond the common song of the broken hearted through popular music standard is Plaster’s astonishing depth of stark, naked honesty through maddening over-analyzation of every conceivable detail of events that have resulted in his emotional confusion. More than mourning this fade, this is the unwillingness to accept the reality of lost love, and the never wanting to let go of its tenderness or the dreams it once held in promise. Over two discs, Plaster leaves no stone of thought, feeling, or impulse unturned through this work of aching introspection of lush soundscape in the realm of ethereal music.

Hope Was, through an artistic method of exclusive design, chronicles a personal fall in struggle of helplessness exposed in the aftermath of an abandoned touch, when things are over and endless, empty days claw ravenously at the pit of the stomach, as the heart desperately strives to survive eternal hours of desolation. These are songs as reflections of moments in the seemingly futile resistance of an end to faith in humanity’s capacity of understanding, or a break in breathing that interrupts the small hours of sleep. Below the mocking ceiling, and the haunting stillness of silence, just to forget those now empty and murderous words becomes an obsession. Every second that hangs in the air in the slow passing of time on days such as this opens pathways of new realizations of burden to be contemplated in the maniacal effort to simply make sense of it all. The isolation, self-doubt, and utter denial left in the wake of love’s death is so accurately captured and expressed here as to suddenly bring everything to a standstill, where the world freezes to nothingness and loneliness wraps around like the most caring hands one could ever have known. Plaster’s unflinching position of holding on to even the faintest hope of renewal is all that is left to get him through. Indeed, it is this very hope that lies at the core of this music, no matter how dejected and bitter he becomes. He calls himself "fucking stupid" for wanting to be away from his love, and knowing he will never be granted a chance to change this, recognizes the truth of his affection as stubborn to leave him, and although he trembles with agony, cannot let it die.

"You are so gone, like the water in a river: always moving further along.
And I’m a stone- a great, big stuck stone- the greatest, biggest, stuckest stone.
And I can’t move on"

Plaster’s singing is nervous and shaky, and his voice carries the weight of vulnerability expected of one suffering such emotional disharmony. His words are plain-spoken and structured in disorganization of thoughts resembling scribbled reflections of fractions in time more so than traditional lyrics. Ambience of 4 a.m. slow-motion haze seeps into these tracks, portraying an atmosphere in shifts of uneasiness and tranquility, paralleling the mind’s fluctuation between despair and hope. Warmth of radiance in the form of keyboards hover above delicate guitars as the serenity of a new dawn whose sun shines through in dusty rays across haunted rooms, while minimal yet awkward percussion offsets this beauty with the feeling that something is not right. When these elements coalesce into distant washes of sound, the rush of memories and the places they bring you to, flows through every space, within and without, and you know where this comes from. The fragility of this music is enough to cause a collapse in even the most indifferent, simply because of its sincerity of genuine expression. One listen to Plaster’s frail voice in the disc’s on-the-verge-of-falling-apart finale, "Forget it. I give up. Goodbye. I love you." will leave you paralyzed in the reality of emotional devastation.

"This will never be over. My love will never be over."

An overwhelming and exhaustive, yet embracing and ultimately rewarding, work, Hope Was is a breathtaking comprehensive examination of the remnants of extinguished love. In the experience of human life, the most heart-ripping pain one can encounter is perhaps a once held warm hand of a lover dropping yours for another, and the knowing that what you’ve shared has met its end. The sensations alive only through memory remain vivid through the many sleepless nights and vacant hours, a torment that hides its end in shadows of delusion. SoulWhirlingSomewhere has offered a refuge with this exceptional effort, to immerse the ache of the love-forsaken.

A.M.D.
5/14/05

Tracklisting:

1. Everything was beautiful
2. How to hang yourself
3. Yuma
4. I will never let go
5. There is no getting through
6. When a person splits in two, where does the old half go?
7. You’re a book I’ll never finish
8. I should throw myself under a train
9. When they emptied the sea
10. Strength is my weakness
11. I am the last
12. Waking
13. Everyone will eventually leave you
14.

Disc 2:

1. Nothing is different/Arkansas
2. How to bury yourself
3. The safety in overglorifying the past
4. The last time I left
5. When
6. The hook through it
7. S-qoia
8. Sonora/red
9. Unsleep
10. The great barrier
11. Forget it. I give up. Goodbye. I love you.

SoulWhirlingSomewhere
Please Sennd Help
Projekt, 2001

"i attach too easily, and it just leaves me empty"

As if sifting through old photographs and letters of past lovers in a process of final farewells in the stillness of an empty day, on Please Sennd Help, Michael Plaster attempts to bring his love life, in its wholeness in remembrance of each significant relationship, into clear for closure. Free of the paralyzing despondency of Hope Was, Please Sennd Help is a travell through comforting memories of moments lost to the transience of life in Plaster’s brilliant gift of creating lavish tapestries of sound in painful yet inviting beauty.

Through tranquil soundpictures equally radiant and melancholy, this music moves as waves of serenity in trembling seas. Using silence as an instrument, Plaster’s skill in crafting anticipatory hesitance with hanging notes barely breathing in-between transitions reflects the anxious suspense and uncertainty hovering above and drifting below both new and dying passion. A stronger presence of electronic minimalist percussion balances these songs, pulsing through movements as a wayward heartbeat while gentle, fragile piano, ethereal synths, and subtle guitar swirl with Plaster’s shaking voice. For a breathtaking display, reference the dark sea that is "In On", a soul-wrenching account of a moment of betrayal witnessed by the songwriter, the final moments of which is carried by slow pulsing and weighty percussion pounding as would a frightened and devastated heart in the fall of collapse, as Plaster hurtfully sings "last time I trust anyone, last time I trust you". Similar movements arise throughout this work, seemingly bringing each story to its final place in the shape of memory, summed up in a line or two as if to label each relationship with something such as "I’ve heard that one before" or simply, as in closer "I Give Up. Goodbye", an eternally repeated "goodbye" to all who have come before, faded to the realm of memories.

"All that it takes for me is to see your face or listen to you speak. I only wish that you had understood me. Because I don’t spend my time on just anyone"

As wonderfully expressive as Plaster’s vocals are, it is during the instrumentals that the tactics of subtlety and scenic beauty are most effectively employed. "Salt Angel", "The Sun In Braids", and "Little Gaze" each represent effervescent ambience caressed by aching sentiments, uniting the sunlight of new dawns with the fleeting stare of the dreamless. Yet, it is the utterly gorgeous opener, "The Wedding", that stands as this effort’s most penetrating and moving piece. Progressing gently from delicate, sparse piano, into gleaming splendor of golden awakenings, the piece eventually settles into a low backwash of humming synth floating just enough above the surface to secure its existence, before drifting into the CD’s first vocal-fueled track, the scintillating "Nani". The movements of "The Wedding" exhibit the music of SoulWhirlingSomewhere at its purest level, with such movements to arise throughout this work, most evident in "Aileron" and "Box" in how the music shifts in passages like flipping through sonic photographs, an inward deliverance, or a cure for those moments when nothing is left but to falter and leave.

When Plaster remembers and misses the sleepy breathing of a former lover, the clothes from twelve days, the quivering smile, or the light music drifting in the distance as he lay near an angel in the flesh, the sincerity of genuine, naked emotion expressed in this music comes through in real ways as an imitation of raw, full life. To know love is to know an aching yearning in even the blissful embrace of shared passion. To know Please Sennd Help is to have known what it means to unexpectedly discover a forgotten love note from a faded romance and relive a dream, in a fragment of a lifetime, in sad remembrance, but in the embrace of life’s affection.

5/29/05

Tracklisting

1. The Wedding
2. Nani
3. Aileron
4. Salt Angel
5. Shivering Fox
6. You Stutter When You Sleep
7. Box
8. The Sun In Braids
9. In On
10. Little Gaze
11. Gaze
12. Happy Valley
13. I Give Up. Goodbye.

SoulWhirlingSomewhere

Projekt

Eating The Sea (Projekt, 1993)
Everyone Will Eventually Leave You (Projekt, 1995)
Pyewackit MCD (Projekt, 1997)
Hope Was (Projekt, 1998)
Please Sennd Help (Projekt, 2001)
The Great Barrier (Projekt, 2004)