by Emmet Martin
The Nightland is Powers/Rolin Duo’s third release of 2020, following a self titled LP on Feeding Tube Records in April and a collaboration with Cloud Nothings drummer Jayson Gerycz released on Garden Portal back in March. It just came out last month via Trouble in Mind Records as part of their “Explorer Series.” Throughout the album, Matthew J. Rolin and his partner Jen Powers create sweeping soundscapes of acoustic drone. Guitar lines from Matthew J. Rolin evoke the likes of Robbie Basho or Jim O’Rourke in their swaying rhythm, while the glimmering ambience from Jen Powers’ hammered dulcimer (which is beautiful in its own right) provides a wonderful backdrop for Rolin’s guitar melodies. Together they pay homage to their free improvisation and free folk influences while also breaking new ground. Nobody else sounds quite like them.
Judging from the photo in the album art of “Nightland,” I anticipated something solemn and quotidian. Ambient background music, I thought. I put it on for the first time while attempting to write a few emails and was quickly drawn in. After a few minutes of failing to write a single word, my laptop was closed. What at first glance seemed to be a simple affair was actually a very intricate interplay between two musicians so comfortable experimenting together that they hit heights seldom reached by others in their field; their chemistry is especially powerful considering that the two are romantic partners.
Powers’ dulcimer playing at first seems to be just drone, but over the course of the tape’s two sides many slow, drawn out melodies form. At times her playing becomes a marvelous centerpiece, especially on “Iridescent.” This longform song finds the duo weaving their melodies in and out of one another, each taking the lead at key moments and propelling the song through its extended runtime. This creates a comfortable yet stirring ambience similar to a Windy & Carl album if they had looked to a label like Takoma for inspiration instead of 4AD. The tape’s other composition, “Oval,” finds Rolin taking center stage, circling around a finger plucked melody while taking plenty of space and time with each phrase and note. Powers’ dulcimer fills the cracks, providing a droning, melodious backdrop that allows Rolin to mess around with tempo and phrasing; his initially simple melody soon turns to explosive fingerpicking as swells of effect laden dulcimer erupt behind him.
I am somewhat new to this band, only discovering them with the release of their S/T LP in April of this year, but from what I hear, in a live setting they are a force to be reckoned with. I’ve seen a few of their livestreams over the course of Covid but I imagine that the feeling of the air resonating in the same room with them would be euphoric. I am hopeful for a future in which this can happen. It’s one of the few things keeping me going these days.