I don’t know much about electric bird noise. I assume it’s one person with a guitar and a looper and a dream, but as far as I know it could be a duo, or even a whole ensemble. EBN has an extensive catalog reaching back a decade or more on the fine drone-oriented label Silber Records, but “stcesni eht fo ecnad” is the only thing of theirs I’ve listened to (my ears have been kind of busy lately). This song is relatively simple – careful guitar lines meandering one note at a time over and under and through each other, looping, reversing, and twisting in the wind like so many dancing insects (I’m particularly picturing a mass of gawkily graceful, spindly-legged stick insects, clambering and twining and crowding along a green, bendy branch) and swarmed in occasional sinister, buzzing, clouds of double-picked thrum or blissful, tremulous drone. Despite its simple elements, like so much of the music in this collection, “stcesni eht fo ecnad” utterly holds one’s attention and reveals more and more with each listen.
I’m afraid the seven hours of music in this volume of Ball of Wax is just giving me (and, I hope, you) more assignments for further listening, but that’s never a bad thing. I’ll just have to add electric bird noise to the list for a future deep dive, maybe some time after I’ve properly absorbed the catalog of autOaudiO.
Levi, that’s exactly what I pictured. This track is deeply enjoyable and makes me want to investigate further. And 51 is one of the most ambitious Ball of wax offerings by track duration alone!