Ball of Wax 51 Songs: Mark Schlipper – “1000 Seconds in the Chapel”

Mark Schlipper (familiar to Ball of Wax followers for his significantly louder work in The Luna Moth, Perish the Island, and more), contributes a song here as his eponymous, droneful self. Beautiful and obscure(d), the evocatively titled “1000 Seconds in the Chapel” slowly builds from ambient, scratching guitars that may or may not be the (circuit bent?) hybrid of a Buddha machine and an electronic Indian tanpura drone box, or simply the organic sound of electricity, wound strings and leaning into an amplifier. (I’m reminded vaguely of Bruce Licher’s intro parts in Scenic, but Schlipper repeats and loops, doubling down on the drone where Licher shifts gears towards more familiar “songs”). Schlipper’s drones gradually become denser over the first third of the piece, until joined by a plucked note pattern. Just as the drones could come from any number of sources (electric guitar, loops, contact mic on the Tacoma Narrows bridge, metal flagpole in the wind slowed to a quarter speed, etc.) the melodic figure obscures its origin (piano? acoustic guitar? prepared autoharp? does it matter?) as it builds and begins to shiver and glitch, somewhat solidifying into a stable(-ish) melody before gradually dissipating, crumbling and fading. Lovely stuff.