Blessed are those who have regular access to yard sales, for they shall inherit the best gear and records. Take Scott Gilmore, whose idiosyncratic studio setup is the product of years’ worth of scrounging through strangers’ garages in his native Northridge, in the San Fernando Valley. He records his music directly to a quarter-inch reel-to-reel machine that he picked up at a yard sale, and his instruments represent a mix of the enviably rare (Arp Odyssey), the economically minded (Roland TR-606 drum machine, a cheaper alternative to the more famous 808 or 909), and the truly unusual (a bamboo saxophone).
His music, which sounds as vintage as his Hammond 102200 Preset Synth, also has the distinct air of something you might find in a dusty corner of someone’s garage. The tracklisting of a recent mix that Gilmore put together for Red Bull Radio gives a good indication of his influences, like Arthur Russell, Gary Wilson, Captain Beefheart, R. Stevie Moore—a motley crew of eccentrics and iconoclasts who bent the process of getting music down on tape to their own crooked wills. Full of clean-toned guitars, percolating rhythm boxes, and layer upon layer of wispy analog synthesizers, it takes its principal stylistic cues from Krautrock and library music; the album often sounds like Air’s Moon Safari or Stereolab’s Dots and Loops run through a beat-up transistor radio that’s been wrapped in cheesecloth.
It makes a natural fit for Mark Barrott’s International Feel, an Ibiza-based record label that has taken upon itself to revive the sounds of Balearic music at its balmiest: The album is a chill, whimsical listen marked by sunny melodies, lilting rhythms, and timbres as watery as the ice melting in the bottom of your glass. Though Subtle Vertigois billed as his debut album, it’s actually the follow-up to a 2016 cassette on SFV Acid’s SFV Records label. Whereas that tape, bearing the low-key title Volume 01, was recorded in mono, the new one makes the leap to stereo; it also boasts an ever so slightly richer, fuller sound, achieved by recording eight separate tracks to his reel-to-reel, bouncing into the computer, then recording another pass on the multi-track and bouncing down again. Nevertheless, it maintains the same muted, understated air as its predecessor.
In “Pieced Together,” jazzy guitar chords strum around a kind of lite-reggae groove while Hammond stabs evoke wooden-floored roller rinks. “Walking Underground” fleshes out a sun-bleached bossa nova groove with sighing vocals that sound like they’ve been rescued from an answering machine. “Flight Through Grey” superimposes the German Autobahn onto the Southern California highway system, crisscrossing the arid landscape to the pulse of a chugging motorik groove, while long, skinny synth leads trace contrails against the pale sky. The opening duo of “E70 No. 01” and “Europe” will appeal to Shy Layers fans; the songs’ faintly tropical guitar tone, sublimated funk, and bittersweet reverie are cut from cloth similar to that used in the Atlanta musician’s yacht-pop debut.
Gilmore studied guitar for 18 years, and the level of musicianship here is accordingly high. His evolving compositions are surprisingly complex, given their laid-back air: Not only do they nail their desired hazy mood, but Gilmore’s multi-tracking methods keep their moving parts constantly shifting, so that no two passages are quite alike. New counterpoints are always cropping up, new voices constantly slipping into the mix; synthesizer leads multiply like Mickey Mouse’s splintered broom in Fantasia (just way more chill—imagine “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” adapted for the era of legal weed, maybe). If the album’s easy-going rhythms and chord changes suggest a certain low-stakes air, the music’s understated virtuosity keeps you coming back, and the penultimate track, “Tides”—a short, ambient sketch for arpeggiated synthesizer—hints at a more experimental undercurrent that Gilmore could well follow into his next recording, should he choose to. A wonderful Sunday-morning record, Subtle Vertigo revalidates the very idea of easy listening.
