On their first record in almost seven years, Tilth has taken the most basic elements of rock music and put them proudly on display like well-polished gem stones.

Released last week on Round Bale Recordings, Rock Music features the duo of Nathan McLaughlin and Cody Yantis taking various aspects of the genre, like guitar riffs, rollicking piano and fuzz distortion, and putting them under microscopic focus.

This record contains all of these common musical components slowed down, stretched out and opened up, until each track is essentially a minimalist ambient or drone piece. This unique process reveals the hidden beauty within the individual ingredients of rock music. Throughout the album, electric guitars grumble and hum like great pacified beasts, accordions wheeze long sustaining moans and piano notes are allowed to peacefully hang in the air until they completely decay.

McLaughlin and Yantis then emphasize these enchanting macro-zoomed qualities by then constructing subtle compositions around each sound. For instance, on “Earth’s Grammar,” glacially slow guitar chords are joined by spiritual vocalizations and astral waves of reverberating fiddle, which together creates a stunning soundscape.

This is a record any Daniel Bachman fan will want to get their hands on. Click here to get yours now.

-KH

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