Lester Grovington – Holding Lines

6.2.21 by Matty McPherson

Let’s keep things brief, my water is about to boil, as Lester Grovington doesn’t really do that. The Michigan-area sound finagler recently returned with a new C-30 on Flophouse entitled Holding Lines. Information is scant, but the tape’s wicked hand-paper design and dubbing is enough to hold me from getting prickly over what I know and don’t know.

For example, I don’t know what pedals, whispers, or various other doo-dahs Mr. Grovington has acquired and reformatted into a vast soundscape of reverb stretching out to the horizon line. I just know that as soon as “Yessing” starts its buildup, I’m suddenly moonlighting as a storm chaser, heading straight towards a propulsive tornado knocking over all the drums and chimes. That it invokes the time I’ve spent with my CDs of the Constellation Records roster (circa 2000-2005) I could only yap “hip hip hooray!” Yet, by the time that opening track’s uncanny energy spike has rested, I find myself back down on the water with “Augury Carousel.” It’s a piece that soothes like steam from that sauna (that the security guard won’t let you sneak into). It sounds realized on the spot, yet each echo or boom blast is too-well timed not to be planned. Can I be certain of that? Look, my water just boiled and I gotta flip to side B.

Alright, now I’m halfway through a Jasmine Pearl, and suddenly I’ve started to understand Grovington’s mannerisms! Wait – oh no. “Experienced Rider” opens side B like a space pod coming out of its droning orbit. Moving in its space like a one-thousand-yard stare it prepares for a swift water landing, with each drum beat, tonal drone layer, and subliminal sound effect building its orbit into… an electrifying club-adjacent crescendo banger! Try mixing the back-half of this snack into your DJ mix! Levington closes with “Life’s a Gas,” a salt-water sea dive that scans and transforms the whole tape into a chill-out zone that terraforms your body into its natural gaseous state. In fact, I don’t really know how I’m typing this!

So, from the heights of space to the fathomless depths of the oceans, Grovington has led me down a stupendous adventure. Somewhere between the four tracks and their drone-crashes and dance-crescendos, lies a pretty devious quickform journey that is well worthy of coppin’.

Edition of 37 from FLOPHOUSE

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