Grant Evans has traded individually and group-wise under a number of noms-de-musique, including Nova Scotian Arms, whose relatively hushed avant-ambient introduced the present reviewer to his work about a decade ago.
So Calender Moth comes as a bit of a surprise. Mustering “field recordings, lap harp, feedback, tape machine loops, prepared piano, singing bowl, shortwave radio, signal generator, synthesizer, digital percussion, metal, primitive reverb, bells, pure data,” and the kitchen sink, I’d bet, Evans unleashes a virtual fire hose of flinty effluvia, an unwholesome discharge of sounds thick and thin at full blast. It is quite an ordeal.
But over the course of an hour, the digital onslaught gradually wears down its sharpest edges and a more analogue, industrial feel emerges – machinery clanks, circuits short, steam is vented. The cacophony of zeroes speared on arrow-headed ones relaxes into quasi-bucolic, Rust Belt isolationism. This feels good.
Stephen Fruitman
Avant Music News 