Intransitive Recordings is extra-proud to present 1975, the debut solo album of tightly-coiled, crackling electronic ambience by C. Spencer Yeh. While “debut” may seem a strange word to use to describe an album by a guy with such a deep discography, Yeh explains that 1975 is like nothing anyone has heard from him before. “One thing is I really wanted to focus on a certain feeling of stasis. So much of what else I do just kinda pushes and pushes forward. 1975 is more vertical than horizontal, even though one can’t escape the horizontal completely.” Taking a confident step away from his familiar work as an improvising violinist and vocalist, from the mythology of his rock/noise band Burning Star Core, and from his recent forays into pop music, the omnivorous Yeh here reveals himself to be a composer of unsettling electro-acoustic miniatures.

Yeh approached his source material with a desire to be transparent, even literal, and to avoid straightforward narrative. The literal is there in the deceptively matter-of-fact track titles — “Drone”, “Voice”, “Shrinkwrap from Solo Saxophone CD”, “Two Guitars” — but knowing which sound source is buried beneath these tones does little to remove 1975‘s sense of enveloping mystery. This is sensual abstract music with a light touch, a confident minimalism that only reveals its unsettling depth, sharp corners, and playful malevolence with repeat listens.