Today, the legendary duo of Pan American (Mark K Nelson of Labradford and Anjou) & Kramer are broadcasting their new record, Reverberations of Non-Stop Traffic on Redding Road, to the world. Ambient in the truest sense of the word, the record is a collection of tracks built from minimalist guitar, orchestral drones and mellotrons, that hang in the balance of serenity and melancholy.
Writing on the record’s last single, “The Miner’s Pale Child” Dave Cantrell of Stereo Embers Magazine said, “That it’s mesmerizing is no surprise, nor is the fact that it’s echoic and lonely as human longing, the thing, it would seem, built somewhat beguilingly from the inside out with an intuitive grace that only musicians of this caliber and patience and, most important, faith in themselves and their process could create. Emerging as if from a mist made of some sort of meditative static, a tone totters on the border between atonal and harmonic like the toll of a clock tower heard through the warp of time. It’s as if one can sense, maybe even see, said child appearing sylph-like out of that spellbinding miasma of suggestion and mystery, lost for a moment in one of those oddly particular epiphanies of childhood, the thrum of the mines, of the dripping forest around them, conjuring a kind of wonder out of the mud and noise of their environment.”
The album’s focus track, “Floating Epitaph”, is releasing today alongside another ambient-cinema film by Kramer, feautring a scenic, dreamlike moonscape. Kramer offered his explanation of the song’s gentle mysticism, calling it, “An audio mile-marker for musics & musicians long gone, dislodged from the earth and drifting freely through the mountains of memory. This final piece from the LP is for those who came before us and never left.”
Kramer and Nelson also offered the following quotes on the album as a whole.
Kramer: “I would beg listeners both animal and human to allow these beautiful landscapes I’ve created in collaboration with Mark Nelson to sing and speak and weep for themselves. Please. Forget about words. Just LISTEN.”
Nelson: “It was an honor to work with Kramer. That we came out of it with a great friendship and a record that’s unique to each of our histories and music that we’re proud to share is a privilege and a joy. As for the music, this line from Arthur Russell says it so well: ‘If I could convince you these are words of love, the heartache would remain but the pain would be gone.'”
Reverberations of Non-Stop Traffic on Redding Road by Pan American & Kramer is available on all DSPs today, and can be purchased today via Shimmy-Disc.
