The back cover of Belomancie reads “COMPOSED, PERFORMED, & PRODUCED BY CAMERON STALLONES.” A few years ago, that information would’ve been redundant, as Sun Araw began in the late 00’s clearly as Stallones solo project. But lately it’s been an expanding universe, incorporating various musicians into both studio and concert settings; he’s even referred to it as the Sun Araw Band. This ensemble has morphed so much that some iterations took on new names—Turban Chopsticks, Duppy Gun, The Celebrate Music Synthesizer Group—suggesting Stallones is increasingly interested in subsuming his personality into a larger collective. So, suddenly, it’s surprising that he would make a Sun Araw record by himself.
This would all just be interesting trivia if it didn’t have discernible effects on the music. But the sonic minimalism of Belomancie makes it distinctly the expression of a single mind. This is easily the most sparse, skeletal record Stallones has made. He’s explored stripped-down versions of his woozy psych-dub before, and this double LP is too wide to be labelled with a single style. But the majority has a building-block feel. Frequently throughout its 80 minutes, Stallones hones in on the most irreducible elements of Sun Araw—a single beat here, a minute loop there—to see what might happen if they got to play alone for a while.
The result hypnotizes as strongly as the murkier swirls of previous peaks—the glowing smoke of On Patrol, the bleary humidity of Ancient Romans—but in a different way. In a sense, listening to the album’s sharp, pointillist beats and all the air in between them is like staring into space rather blinking into the fog. But there’s also something microscopic about the music that makes it like a nuclear laboratory. With so many layers stripped away—primarily the heavy reverb of Stallones’ guitar, which usually drowns his songs in swampy dreams—what remains gets magnified, meaning a single machine-drum hit can sound as big as a bomb. It’s as if Stallones zoomed so far into the essence of Sun Araw that you can see the molecules circling each other, the neurons firing through synapses. And it’s pretty fun to just keep on staring.
Part of that enjoyment comes from how Stallones can go minimal without losing a key Sun Araw effect—the sense that it’s all happening spontaneously. There may be a path in the crooked beats, squeaking synths, and three-note guitar loops, but there’s certainly no forseeable destination. This open, anything-could-happen vibe comes easier when music is bathed in echo or buried in haze; making sparser stuff feel so pregnant with potential is a trickier feat. But Stallones is so practiced at conjuring that magic that it’s almost impossible to imagine him not doing so. When the pin-pricks and string-slashes of “Scrim”, or the snare punches and two-word lyrics of “Huff” (note those minimal titles) unfurl across their nine-minute journeys, every moment feels like a step toward something new. By the end of each I’m thinking less about how long Stallones has been churning away than about how much longer he clearly could.
Which points to the greater significance of Belomancie in the context of Sun Araw’s oeuvre. It shows Stallones has more moves in his aresnal, more ways he can adjust or reimagine his approach without losing its essence—or in this instance, actually enhancing it. The sounds may be comparatively shrunken, but together they stretch his world, suggesting its expanse may be boundless. If you’ve been fascinated by any of Stallones’ work, Belomancie will get you stoked about not only what he’s done, but how much more he can do.
