Aaron Russell - Vernal Pools (CD)

Aaron Russell
Vernal Pools
Memory Waste
United States, 2026
Compact Disc

Another batch from a fantastic new label here in Western Mass!

FROM THE LABEL:

I met Aaron Russell in the summer of 2003, when we both moved to Austin at the same time from different parts of California. I was reportedly one of only two known fans of his previous band, THETEETHE, so we planned to play music together. This began a longstanding, close musical partnership in The Weird Weeds, along with guitarist Sandy Ewen and bassist Lindsey Verrill, who joined the band halfway through our 10-year existence. Although fans of the band or Aaron’s other music may primarily know him as a guitar player, “Vernal Pools” is the most recent and well-developed example of Aaron’s engagement with electronic and drone music, which he’s been working with almost entirely in private for over 20 years. After Aaron and I played guitar and drums together for the first time, he sent me an unreleased album of what he called ambient music that he’d made earlier that year with the note, “I made this stuff to help me calm down.” The music was completely different from the guitar music he’d played and lacked most of the touchstones of what one might expect from the genre. Rather than soothing drones amid washes of atmospheric reverb, Aaron’s ambient music had a strange and compelling clinical quality that seemed to access something deeper than a “close your eyes and turn off” type of experience.

I’ve always been interested in the way all of Aaron’s music seems to have a kind of utilitarian, functional quality that comes – at least in part – not from a place of traditional aesthetic beauty, but from feeding some kind of psychological need or desire. The first track of “Vernal Pools” pairs electronic drones created in SuperCollider with subtly interwoven guitar feedback, resulting in a slowly vibrating, pulsating mass of sound that shifts almost imperceptibly from one harmonic zone to another, evocative of the title’s seasonal pools that fill and evaporate, and reminiscent of Eliane Radigue’s masterful journey through states of consciousness, “Kyema.” The second track introduces traditional guitar playing, more akin to music heard on the final Weird Weeds album, in an extended meditation on what feels like a single chord whose character is always changing, rather than the multifaceted journey of the first piece. Having known Aaron to have these somewhat parallel interests of droning abstract electronic music and song-oriented harmonic progressions, “Vernal Pools” is a deeply gratifying merging of these two seemingly different musical worlds.

Sarah Hennies, August 2026