Love Is a Stream

—And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky (Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey,” 94-100)
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma has been an anti-guitar hero of mine since the early days of Tarentel; in my world he rubs shoulders with the likes of Thurston Moore. Like Moore he stays busy with a variety of projects such as the aforementioned Tarentel, Colophon, The Holy See, The Alps, and Sea Zombies, as well as releasing albums under his own name. Whether working alone or with other musicians, he’s collaborated with a litany of influential experimental labels such as Temporary Residence, Spekk, Three Lobed, Neurot, Acuarela, Digitalis, Static Caravan, Students of Decay, and, of course, Root Strata, the imprint he founded in 2005. Type is a label his aesthetic seems made for, and the perfect venue for this first major solo effort (similar to Mark McGuire releasing Living with Yourself this year on Editions Mego), Love Is a Stream.
I’m glad that Love Is a Stream is his first high-profile solo release because the material is first-rate, certainly up there with the best work of his career. As if eager to flex his talents, he forgoes a buildup on opener “Stained Glass Body” — there’s only a burst of religious-sounding strains (somehow Cantu-Ledesma has turned his axe into a gutted organ) as if someone, with head bowed in meditation, has been jolted awake, and within five seconds whisked from a cathedral and deposited on the wing of a jet plane. Miraculously, despite the deafening, blown-out noise (reminiscent of The Holy See) and the rapid disappearance of oxygen, the prevailing emotion is elation. Yes, there’s bliss in the danger, in peering over the plane’s edge just as the sun rises; but it’s more than that — a security in escape, a thank you at the relocation to a better realm that someone, something knew you needed. There isn’t a whole lot of variety on Love Is a Stream because there doesn’t need to be. You’re too happy where you are when its inability to contain the “beauteous forms” it’s seen and heard and felt chooses you.
While Love Is a Stream isn’t exactly shoegaze, a kinship certainly exists with the blankets of noise Loveless expressed perhaps better than anywhere else. I’ve heard it said the ideal way to listen to My Bloody Valentine’s magnum opus is to blare it out of twin speakers, put your head in the middle, and pull the speakers in till the sonorous wash pours directly into your ears. I couldn’t do likewise fast enough with Love Is a Stream.
The record closes with “Mirrors Death,” perhaps the most subdued track therein. Maybe the jet engine’s fuel — and by extension, the journey — nears its end. Maybe the plane’s wing feels too cold beneath your body to bear, and the light has slowly fallen away. Perhaps you were just listening to a song and you’ve drifted off to sleep. Either way, an almost melancholy feel pervades, as the buzzing gathers and dissipates, eventually altogether. But it’s like something that’s been good for you and you know you’ve been given enough of it for it to stay a part of you, and yet you can’t help but wish it would return at your every summon.
Love Is a Stream is that rare drone record that contains both a destroyed, hollowed-out atmosphere and an omnipresent jubilance, a wealth of melody ringing out from inside a husk of sound. It’s ambient and noise at the same time. Love is indeed a stream, a rush of air that swaddles you in a din-filled bosom. In a year that has afforded us with the lush clamor of Yellow Swans’, er, swansong Going Places (also on Type), I feel almost spoiled to be given another such dispatch from the heavens. It’s fitting, then, that Pete Swanson himself (who will soon release his first major solo effort via Root Strata, entitled Feelings in America) described the record as “completely beautiful and completely blasted…complete blissful envelopment.” I couldn’t agree more.