Reviews:

(Felt Hat) Eloine is Bryan Day, the man, legend, an urban myth - for over two decades working with guzzling gazillions of different musicians, outsiders, releasing music under different monikers with different labels including his own Public Eyesore. Bryan recorded this album just after his tour in Japan, summer of 2024 using his self-made and designed instruments, synths, tapes, objects and last but not least - organ. If you compare it to his other album - Moldy Cushions - this one has a bit different approach. He played and improvised on semi-acoustic instruments such as an unbalanced metal sheet which was excited by an industrial electromagnet. The other one being weighted piano strings which were activated by an ebow. After that those recordings were played through effects into a mixing console and wrapped up and mastered as the final result which you can hear here. It's a quite diverse array of nuances set into a neatly composed wholeness. You get a gritty preparations that are still not crossing the boundaries into a more straightforward noise music as in track reactionary survey, followed by more mellow and mysterious smokers pillow. All the tracks are between over 8 to over 9 minutes and it makes this material interesting enough and balanced as a musical and listening experience. Bryan, also being a versatile musician has lots of trademarks that are still elusive enough to make it difficult to classify his style. It's partly due to the amount of different instruments he designed but surely and definitely due to the fact that he has experience in cross-genres where nothing seems as it sounds and you can expect anything and everything. Yet all of this has a clear structure and makes you want to listen to it again to check what hit you. - Hubert Napiorki

(Raised by Cassettes) A soft humming drone of synth begins this cassettes and it just resonates as other sounds begin to come in. That first sound lingers over it all in a hypnotic way. Crashes come through, the sound of water dripping too, and it just feels like we are locked in a damp basement somewhere, hearing the sounds Jigsaw might make while planning our demise. A little bit of that ambient air now and then it begins to sound as if pianos are breaking, each key falling from its base as it is pressed. Metal dragged across concrete. The banging of items such as pots and pans, only I feel like I recognize them as not being such. A thunderous doom behind it all. As it can feel like this metal digging, scraping even, on the surface there is this whole ambient electricity happening behind it and sometimes it's difficult to really choose which one to focus on. Sharper screeching now takes over the background. This sound becomes both robotic and animalistic at the same time, as it can begin to feel as if we are swirling the drain. As we change songs, an ambient drone takes hold of the next one. There is some creaking, deep bass strings and this just feels haunted in ways. It feels like a transmission from space that is getting some static. A tone now rings as if the bell, it tolls for thee. A sort of creaking drone now, like a door slowly opening, takes us into the third song. Static slips come through and it can feel like we are changing radio stations between guitar chaos. Scattered beeping can have this one sounding like droids communicating with each other as well. That little buzzing tone like a bee brings us to the end of the first side. An audio clip with a drone and grinding type of sound start things off on the flip side. It sounds as if objects are rolling around within other objects, like marbles in a container. A squishy sound now. The audio clips continue but they become more difficult to understand, as sounds whoosh by like skateboard wheels on concrete. It feels like we're changing frequencies in this very electronic way but then some of the sounds can also just be like crumbling up papers which makes it feel much more organic and natural. A soft sound brings us into the second song now, like a motor. It can feel now like we're just flying around in a little plane. A buzzing now, but it still feels like we lift off every so often. Loud beeping now, like when you call a phone number and get that message about it not being in service. This then can also take on a more robotic feeling, like Transformers. Beeping like a watch alarm now. That soft motor purr returns. I'm not quite sure how to describe this sound which comes through next in blips but there is also a ringing behind it. It just feels like something is trying to come out but abruptly gets cut off. Into that droning hum comes some helicopter blade sounds. The static builds to the point where this feels like it's at racing speeds now. It grows more intense. This feels like a lighter version of traffic and then a horn sound comes in, as if to summon. Sharp lasers strike through now. The distortion is like static. Horns now come out with notes. The tempo builds and this giant horn blasts as if to signal battle as we reach the end. - Joshua Macala

(Disaster Amnesiac) The latest release (that Disaster Amnesiac is aware of) from Eloine, Compulsive Dinner Guest, has the distinction of being assembled after musician Bryan Day's summer 2024 tour of Japan. This fact is noted first in light of the press sheet's mentioning "a subtler approach" to the album. One wonders, what did Day observe (and Bryan is always observing closely) that encouraged this approach while in that most sublime of countries? This question is probably rhetorical, and it's obviously Day's prerogative to keep that type of information to himself. That being said, the physical evidence that arrives in the form of Compulsive Dinner Guest, shows more moves within his very personal sound world, consisting of varied self-innovated instruments and processes. An attentive listener will be presented the various aspects from this world; these aspects, resulting from quite a complex process, feature generally subtle shifts in rhythm and pitch. Palpable sub-surface sonic agitations and excitements are sounded on Reactionary Survey. Smokers Pillow has immediate drone effects that frame gestural actions upon Bryan's rig, which are followed up by slowly emerging voices, both high and low. Percussion and pure Noise are blended well during Mancopter Ascends, which concludes with a well paced fade out to conclude side A. On the flip side, Nothing Becomes Everything has ghostly voices and rocks with pedal tones, while the neatly entitled Spiderwhite creaks with machinery clips and late night outdoor trance sounds. Set closing track Thum Tax Live (was this tracked in Nippon during one of the shows?) is a dramatic slow burner with ring modulators. All told, Compulsive Dinner Guest would be welcomed by any fan of abstract music. It commands and rewards deep listening. The pacing and sound assembly practiced by Eloine are unique and fully realized. The influence of Japan can be felt and heard within this emergent poise, mostly for its quietly simmering mesmerizing tones. Zen and the art of Day! - Mark Pino

(The Wire) Eloine is the longrunning solo project of California based Bryan Day, who may be best known as the guy who runs the Public Eyesore label, but is also a dab hand with his own homemade instruments and their friends. On this tape the music ranges from quiet instances of dust-gathering to slippery keyboard drones to the coughs of automobile engines in deep space. Day is a crazily inventive composer and tinkerer. The way he treats sounds is not quite like anyone else. Definitely worth some listens. - Byron Coley

(Vital Weekly) It’s a surprise to see Test Tone Music still exists. I primarily know their releases from the group Billy?, which may have been some 20 years ago when I last heard them (and, as always, I might be wrong). As you should know by now, Bryan Day is the man behind Eloine, and he’s a craftsman creating some weird sound tools out of wood, metal, springs, and whatever he finds in the junkyard. He adds homemade synthesisers, found tapes, objects and an organ. He recorded The five pieces in his home studio, and I don’t know if he sits down and records a bunch of sounds, takes them to the computer and carefully creates edits and mixes. It might very well be possible, but just as likely is the opposite, which means he records everything live. It’s not for me to say what it is; it could go either way if I’m honest. That is to say, there’s an element of improvisation in his music, and at the same time, he stays clear from overtly plink and plonk music. Eloine likes his sustaining sounds, drones and otherwise, to be a backdrop in the music or sometimes even the chief element of the dish, in ‘Smokers Pillow’, for instance. This leads to the thought this might be processed and edited recordings. Day takes his time in these pieces, which are all about nine minutes long. Sometimes a bit long and staying too much in the same place, whereas change would be nice. But throughout this cassette is very lovely. It is the kind of improvisation with non-traditional objects and lo-fi electronics that I enjoy very much. - Frans De Waard

(Bad Alchemy) Im Sommer 2024 hat er unterwegs in Japan offenbar auch den Kontakt zu Test Tone Music geknüpft. Dort erschien jedenfalls Compulsive Dinner Guest (TTMC-2, DL) mit Youdonthavetocallitmusic, die er, allein als ELOINE, im August und September in San Pablo kreiert und abgemischt hat mit analogen und digitalen Effekten als Dub der anderen, der Day'- schen Art. Ganz ohne Beats, vom Spinnenbein-Flamenco bei zuletzt 'spiderwhite' abgesehen. Mit ominösen Titeln wie 'reactionary survey.', 'smokers pillow' (don't smoke in bed?), 'mancopter ascends.' (ein Rettungshubschrauber?) als schnurrende, schwingend rotierende Bruitistik, mit prickelndem Schaum, gedämpft plonkenden Saiten. Bei 'nothing becomes everything' mit gedämpften Stimmen, diffus stöbernd, scharrend, steinig knirschend, dröhnend. Der allgemeine Low-Fi-Smog als Mehltau der Welt? Alltagsbelanglosigkeiten, gehört mit Kleintierohren, als Lauscher an der Wand? - Rigo Dittmann

(Lost In A Sea Of Sound) Just finished the description for the newest Eloine release titled Impractical Furniture. Wanted to continue with a short description for Compulsive Dinner Guest. This is a cassette release on the label Test Tone Music out of Japan. Have listened to this one many times and can better compare these two sonic outputs. Both releases contain five selections and are similar in length. Also on both releases, Eloine glides along the thresholds of the most advance sonic listening individuals. Playing this for ninety nine plus percent of people around us will cause questions and some mental turmoil. That being said, i think Compulsive Dinner Guest could be somewhat more acceptable to new aural adventurers. There is more safe space in this recording. Impractical Furniture is louder and more crushing. This is a good part of the reason to quickly post these two Eloine releases in sequence. Also the fact Compulsive Dinner Guest is a great start to finish composition that received a good amount of playing time on the headphones while at work. As mentioned, released on the label Test Tone Music. Not sure of the ordering process for cassettes from Test Tone Music, maybe just email them. - Ken Lower