Reviews:

(Lost In A Sea Of Sound) Eloine exhibits again the unearthed beauty of ruff cut sounds. Silently dormant within a menagerie of re-purposed material, a creative mind induces new found motion and purpose. From this charge of energy, Impractical Furniture takes sonic shape. Five selections were procured for this composition from an impressive assortment of twenty five to choose from. A striking feature of this album is the detailed clarity of recorded features. Seemingly on first listen, the cacophony of all objects making noise is random and unvarnished. But, there is an organic feel weaving through all tracks, creating a fluid delivery for fringe sounds and wandering imaginations. After a few times through, Impractical Furniture definitely radiates with a gossamer finishing touch. Eloine has a creative skill set with attuned knowledge crafting a balance of violent clanging and scraping with the subtle quieter moments of dispersed energy. This is the most alluring aspect of this body of work, pushing across the thresholds without dropping listeners off the cliff. Bryan Day is the creative source for Eloine. His talents reaching far into building museum piece sonic instruments to fantastic solo performance. Less than a year ago, Lost in a Sea of Sound listened and described Eloine's Moldy Cushions release. This is still available from West Virginia's Flag Day Recordings. Impractical Furniture is a cassette release on the Personal Archives label. An edition of fifty with copies currently available. Between these two is another Eloine release titled Compulsive Dinner Guest. Have listened to this many times but no description on the site. Should probably change that. - Ken Lower

(Bad Alchemy) Brian Day, der Public Eyesore E-Macher, hat auch selber wieder Musik gemacht, nämlich als ELOINE Impractical Furniture (Personal Archives, PA//226, C-52). Neben das auffallend benannte „The Beautiful Uncut Hair of Graves“ von Nonlinear Filed, der damit Walt Whitman zitiert, stellt er mit 'Rubber Sawhorse', 'Sunken Corners', 'Potluck By Proxy', 'Guiltlines' und 'Bread Welder Again' fünf seinerseits irritierend betitelte Stücke. Sie sind bei ihm daheim in San Pablo entstanden mit dem portable, collapsible tabletop instrument setup, das Day bei der Tour mit Ypsmael eingesetzt hatte. Er entlockt ihm Geräusche und Klänge, mit offenbar händischem oder prothetischem Kratzen und Touchieren von metallischen Oberflächen und von Eisendraht. Tastendes Hantieren ist jedenfalls ein wesentliches Moment seines Spiels, das neben krabbeliger Gestik mit blechwannig dongendem Hohlklang durchsetzt ist. Oder mit federndem Surren, schattigem Dröhnen und Schlägen als Loop oder erratisch. Als Day'scher Nachhall von Russolos Intonarumori, jedoch mit dabei auch einem starken hand- und schlagwerklichen Akzent. Zerrende, murksende, harkende Gestik erzeugt daxophonen und schrottig ominösen Krach, ein umsurrter Waber- und Sägeriff mutet eher elektroautomatisch an. Doch zuletzt dominieren nochmal eisendrahtige Machenschaften und ein rubbeliges Scharren. - Rigo Dittmann

(Foxy Digitalis) There’s a kind of kinetic elegance to Impractical Furniture, as if Bryan Day translated a collapsing toolbox into a language of brittle tension and ghostly resonance. Each track moves with delicate balance, flickering between friction and silence, motion and memory, built from a portable tabletop rig originally designed for live performance and reimagined in the studio. The materiality of the objects comes through clearly: metal scraping, springs stuttering, tape spooling in loops that seem barely tethered to gravity. The music suggests more than it states, offering a sonic blueprint for impossible machines or forgotten rituals. In these pieces, the boundaries between sculpture, circuit, and sound dissolve, leaving behind a hushed choreography of unlikely instruments in quiet conversation. - Brad Rose

(Raised By Cassettes) Items dropping into big ringing and some scraping is how this cassette starts. A bit of a hollow sound now, kind of like an engine is trying to start, but this also just carries the overall sound of someone struggling to breath underwater. Tones drop in. This is an interesting pattern to keep because you could imagine a lot of different scenes in your mind to match the sounds. Whatever you're imagining though, it feels like a struggle. Tones come in next that sound like elastics being plucked, there is just that texture to them, to they also bounce around like rubber balls. This feels like a scramble, in the way that you would be looking for something. In some ways this can also remind me of the warping of a cassette- or record- in that whirring way where it just feels like it's about to break. It's tightly wound. This also reminds me of a dj trying to spin records but instead of a turntable they're manipulating wind. There comes a point where this definitely feels like it is about to stop, but then those whirrs come right back in. As these whirrs progress it can almost begin to sound like shivering. At some point the whirrs can become almost hypnotic, in a way that they take you in so that you can recognize the patterns and begin to almost hear the rhythm as words. I can hear full on songs, but then as it comes to an end I'm once again left with thoughts of choppy wind. On the flip side we begin with that percussion which sounds like the banging of pots. There is some static in here but it is a lot louder and has more parts making up the sound than what was on the first side. It's a lot of banging. Some big gongs ring and drop distortion like bombs. This feels like destruction, like Godzilla walking through a city. Some scraping now, and it can begin to sound electronic even. A saw sound comes out like a moan and it's getting sharper. With screeching, this comes out in a primal way now. I can feel how it is being made with instruments or some objects, but it just feels like the primitive days of cavemen jumping around and throwing rocks at the walls of their caves. Through more scraping, it can sound like the breaking of an acoustic guitar. As everything else quiets now, this can just become a huge distorted explosion. Synths come in now and there is a glass scraping. A lot of that ringing around the glass now, as there is also some stomping behind it. Though that lightsaber type sound persists and this feels like a culmination of all of the different sounds from this side working together or possibly against each other. A fluttering now, like insects and then it goes into a dark place. This feels like we are slowly turning into that plague of locusts sound. There is a wavy synth now, which feels like a humming that can be used to hypnotize. This sound can also just hit and then feel like we're dropping off into the abyss. If the first side was a struggle, this side is fighting back but possibly not winning. That slight crackle of static now, driving through space and some shots are fired. The sort of scraping gets sharper now to where it cuts through like knives. It begins to feel like the soundtrack to a horror film, like Freddy or Jason. Some rattling now and we're into this feeling of banging once again, like how this side started. There is some more scraping now and banging, but it also rings through with these magical type elements. It feels like some kind of final judgment but at the same time could just be some old metal parts on a building swinging around in the wind. Horror elements remain in the sound and it can even begin to sound like a storm, a slow burn to get you in the end. To think of this as a movie is to think of the end of the entire cassette as that final battle scene. - Joshua Macala

(Vital Weekly) Finally, Public Eyesore’s label boss, Bryan Day’s Eloine, has a new release on a different label, Personal Archives. Day creates wooden and metal constructions with wires and springs, which he amplifies and plays. He also adds some synthesiser sounds, found tapes, objects, and an organ. Of course, the visual side is not part of the CD, which is a pity as they are pretty wild pieces, almost art objects. Day rubs, strokes, hits these with other objects, mallets and manually. He takes all the recordings to the computer to construct a piece of music. Still, he retains some of the improvised quality in the resulting compositions. Well, maybe not, and all of these are live recordings. I simply don’t know. As before, Eloine likes the lengthy explorations, a bit of drone generated through some of the effects used, and the music is a free flow of sounds and ideas. Also, as before, some pieces are a bit too long, as typical Eloine pieces are nine to 12 minutes long, but could benefit from either more editing or more events thrown in the melee. Nevertheless, I greatly enjoy this, reminding me of Noise Makers Fifes, Kontakta, Morphogenesis and Kapotte Muziek, all working to some extent with electro-acoustic improvisation. Still, Eloine is the solo act, which is a unique position in this context. - Frans De Waard

(Disaster Amnesiac) Currently at casa de Amnesiac, there exists a stack of Public Eyesore/eh? Records product which still needs to be listened to. This fact is brought up as related to the latest release of Eloine, Impractical Furniture (dig that almost Hipnosis styled cover art!), because I've desired to listen to it a lot more than the three times it's graced the cassette deck. That said, time's moving very quickly, and Disaster Amnesiac always feels compelled to listen to the music that's being described as much as possible. Tapes such as this can certainly be played over and over again, as its mysterious and intuitively intriguing soundscapes offer new facets for the listener with each subsequent interaction. When one chooses to engage with sounds such as these, especially in the case of Bryan Day's singular solo work, with its unique rhythms and phrases, pulled from his portable exotic percussion amalgamation, one can always be treated to fresh, undiscovered aspects within the sound matrix. Impractical Furniture kicks off with Rubber Sawhorse, a longer track which evokes human sounding voices along with some deep tonally bass passages and bass drum sounds. I've heard it as a junkyard Gamelan ensemble. This is followed off with Sunken Corners and its dramatically moving sub-harmonics and subdued, eerie environments. Its coda passage is surprising and lovely. Potluck By Proxy kicks off side b of the tape with a frenetic start. It rather quickly gets more contemplative with its overtones, melodies from resonant metals, before some type of robotic warfare commences. Disaster Amnesiac has heard AI voices being drawn from Day's very analog rig on this one. Track two, Guiltlines, has high register clicks that dialogue with lower register ones for a very dramatic effect. It has waves of energy that are simultaneously intimate in their motions. Impractical Furniture ends with Bread Welder Again, a title worthy of prime Beefheart, a track with more quick pacing that leads to more overall Drone and clacking until its repetitive sound conclusion. It's another fine release from Bryan's Eloine project. Day's sound art seeks the beauty to be found in funky, unlikely sound sources. His rigs often look to Disaster Amnesiac like small cities or chip boards, and it's highly recommended that one see him perform live. Bryan Day must be highly intuitive, for he always makes such well considered and thoughtful sounds. It's completely alright to live by intuition you know. - Mark Pino