Scarcelight, 2003
On his latest full-length, Chris Jeely mixes broken bits of guitar with layers of feedback. At times his sounds are achingly beautiful, but sometimes they are harsh and piercing. According to a liner note, this material was culled from analog and digital recordings spanning ten years. The album strikes me as a mosaic, though it is amazingly cohesive. A third of the tracks clock in at two minutes or less. Quiet fragments build into looped layers of noise that assault the ears. This is challenging music. At its best it is haunting and eery. At its worst it is nearly unlistenable. All in all Jeely’s collages makes for a memorable experience—an album I’m likely to return to over time.