Hauras

Head to the western neighborhoods of San Francisco, and the city becomes a very quiet place after midnight. By 3am,one can almost hear the fog spilling past the sodium lights that illuminate a lonesome street corner at Judah and15th. Whatever soundtracks that emerge from that time and that place inevitably embody that nocturnal atmosphere, anarcoleptic weariness, a waking dream of the insomniac. Such is the psychogeographical realm as channeled throughsound for Hauras, the obliquely musical concern for San Franciscan Howard Ryan.

In "Pervades", Hauras returns to the fragments of guitar warbling through chains of echo and flange, his Basinski-esqueloops of crushingly sad ambient melody, his EVP impressionistic vocals, and his curious interruptions from scannerradio. More than before, he expresses a confidence in his oblique craftsmanship that allows him to push the soundsto include a very compelling drum machine plus guitar noise track in “Stellaged.” Richard Youngs, Gate, and Graham Lambkin all come to mind, as does the terminally obscure project Dial (Jacqui Ham’s post-Ut band of similarly late niteexpressionism). Pervades concludes a trilogy of recordings made during the pandemic era, that also includesIn These Coming Days (2020) and The Glare of the Nave (2021).