irr. app. (ext) is the work of California-based sound artist Matt Waldron, whose collected body of work is far too important to continue to be forgotten. During the past decade, only two full albums -- Dust Pincher Appliances (2003 on Crouton) and An Uncertain Animal, Ruptured; Tissue Expanding in Conversation (1997 on Fire, Inc.) -- have seen the light of day despite the fact that perhaps a dozen albums have been completed. The public silence for irr. app. (ext) was never by Waldron's design, as numerous recording deals collapsed, one after the other. The story becomes all the more of conundrum as these misadventures of neglect and ignorance occurred despite Waldron's high-profile collaborations with Nurse With Wound and Stilluppsteypa. If a humble organization like the Helen Scarsdale Agency can have its say, then we speak to remove whatever curses that have haunted irr. app. (ext.) in the past and provide the world with the opportunity to revel in the spectacle and the beauty that is Matt Waldron's art.
Had things gone differently, Ozeanische Gefühle would have been one of the lost irr. app. (ext.) recordings. That would have been a shame for Ozeanische Gefühle stands as an impeccable composition of post-surrealist dronescaping rivaling such masterpieces as The Hafler Trio's Kill The King, Jonathan Coleclough & Andrew Chalk's Sumac, and Nurse With Wound's Soliloquy For Lilith.
The title has origins with Freud and earlier thinkers; yet Waldron came across Ozeanische Gefühle (which translates from the German as "oceanic feelings") in his studies of Wilhelm Reich who referenced the term to describe the natural state of every healthy organism as connected to and engaged with the world around it, with its energies flowing from the center outwards. For Waldron, Reich's ideas became the starting point for a metonymic exercise seeking to discover that which is near a signifier and spiral beyond each successive discovery along a complicated aesthetic thread by way of intuition and accident.
The album tumbles through a series of sympathetic dronings, field recordings, and performative gestures, continuously traversing the emotional polarities of psychological tension and externalized jouissance. The album begins with a heavily processed flutter of sustained woodwinds accompanied by thunderous rumbles in the distance before dispersing amidst Bernhard Hermann-esque slashings of discordant strings. Later on, the grotesque pathos of a Wurlitzer organ dissolves into a blackened emptiness that envelopes the complex resonant frequencies from Waldron's slow, deliberate performance upon bowls and bells. Despite the incredible depth of his source materials, Waldron displays an uncanny intellect that reflects all of his wandering passages through the lens of a melancholic ambience. Simply put, Ozeanische Gefühle is a wonder to behold. (Helen Scarsdale)