A highly sensuous voyage into the blushing aether from Richard Chartier’s Pinkcourtesyphone project, ‘Arise in Sinking Feelings’ is a celebration of tranquil, kitschy nostalgia and soured romance that conceals a repository of evocative samples under blistered tape noise and Lynchian fog. RIYL Romance, The Caretaker, William Basinski.
Around 10 minutes into ‘when static alludes to apprehension’, muffled voices bounce around below smeared-out drones. It sounds like someone shouting incoherently in a disused grain silo, and immediately provokes the anxiety Chartier admits to wanting to capture on ‘Arise in Sinking Feelings’. He’s already proved how capable he is at capturing vaporous, queer nostalgia with his last run of albums, and this time he wanders alone into the isolating, fleshy darkness. Lit by candlelight, hid muddy, muggy themes sound heartbroken, but not without a hint of wryness. Just head over to the charming ‘notes on vacuuming’ and marvel at its pier-side piano and lavish, showgirl strings, swallowed by reverb. tape-smeared until they’re nothing but gloomy, empyrean whispers.
Elsewhere, Chartier whisks foghorn drones into industrial smoke on ‘post-sumptuous – post-sumptuous’, looping a robotic voice until time-stretched diva wails take us to the close. After the nervous, unsettling doom of ‘gesturing at an object until it is gone’ – almost a quarter hour of rattling tape noise and crackling static – ‘to be expected’ concludes the album on a hushed sort of flirtation, where whimsical strings and tempered xylophones melt into birdsong. “Love never ends,” a voice cries out, as we fade to pink.
—boomkat.com
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fleeting emotions, crafted into a delicate ambiance of desolation and charm…
—headphonecommute.com
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“Le mancava il pavimento. L’impressione di scivolare su un piano inclinato, di andare giù, d’essere sempre lì lì per affogare. E non hai niente”. Monica Vitti commuove in uno dei tanti capolavori di Michelangelo Antonioni. La sensibilità ultraterrena di Richard Chartier la campiona per aprire il suo nuovo disco a nome Pinkcourtesyphone, Arise In Sinking Feelings. Un’ora di divagazione ambient ultra romantiche costruite con suoni e oggetti di ogni forma. Chartier dipinge tele sonore con la fantasia di un visionario, fa sprofondare in abissi senza fine, per poi risorgere tra archi ed esplosioni di malinconia, ansia, DEPRESSIONE E FELICITA.
—Rockerilla magazine, Italy
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Ροζ είναι το χρώμα των μωρών παραπέμποντας σε κάτι το αθώο. Είναι επίσης το χρώμα των συναισθημάτων και εκεί χτυπά η εμμονή του Pinkcourtesyphone με το ροζ που ντύνει όλες του τις δουλειές. Στο νέο του πόνημα τα μουντά μοτίβα συνοδεύονται από δεικτικούς τίτλους με το υπαρξιακό ηχητικό ταξίδι να μη φαντάζει και τόσο αθώο στο τέλος!
—Against The Silence, Greece
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Sometimes, you hear an album that sucks you in; that keeps you, and shakes you hard. One that sings to your soul, and makes you say “That,.. was a great album”. This is one of them. I had to go back right after and listen to it a second time. I needed to know if I really heard something that good. I did. Richard Chartier is a musical wonder. Someone who can take, what appears to be so little, and make it say so much. Layers of sound crafted to sound minimal. That takes a talent beyond what talent is. Seriously great album. I’ll stop gushing now. Actually, no I won’t.
—citr.ca
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Let yourself go and enjoy this dream in pink. Richard Chartier’s Pinkcourtesyphone project sends us on a sensual journey full of nostalgia and moments between dream and reality. Like in a room where the evening sun breaks through the blinds and stirs up dust, there is an old radio somewhere and strange noises reach us. Voices? Wonderful!
—radiohoerer.info
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Arise in Sinking Feelings setzt das fort als Absage an Anxiety, wieder durch ‘the pinkish gate’, hin zu ‘a stunning blandness’. Ja, als wäre fade, farb- und inhaltslose Leere ist immer noch besser als diese barbarische Erregung hier, die nur Furcht, Beklemmung und Besorgnis ver-breitet. Chartier notiert lieber ‘notes on vacuuming’, wartet nur darauf, das dreiste Überheblichkeit sich überhebt (‘pre-sumptuous / post- sumptuous’). Wenn man das Störende doch eifach wegwedeln könnte – ‘gesturing at an object until it is gone.’ Während die Zeit. ‘atmend’ anbrandet, als zeitvergessen summendes Immerzu Immerzu Immerzu. So warten Hausfrauen im Vorstadt-Puppenheim rauchend darauf, dass die Kinder, der Ehemann, ganz Pleasantville sich in Luft auflösen. Melancholie mit rosaroter Brille. Eskapismus in PinkNoir, mit Antonionis Giuliana in der Roten Wüste. Mit Musik wie aus dem Haunted Ballroom von The Caretaker, Gedröhn, das ungut braust, das wie unter Wasser dumpft, das sich als dröhnender, knackender Teufelskreis dreht, das wie ein Motorflugzeug im Nachtflug nicht vom Fleck kommt, das wie von Watte ersticktetes Klagen mitführt. Ultra-pink, wenn dazu ein wehmütig geharftes Piano kreist und geigende Schwaden einer Geisterband erklingen, zu Gezwitscher aus einem Vogelkäfig. Statt mit ‘to be continued’, endet es mit ‘to be expected’, als Dauerschleife. Erwartungsvoll hoffend? Hoffnungglos hoffend? Oder auf alles gefasst? Als Untergeher, oder Untergeherin – sinking… always on the verge of drowning—wie Edward Hopper sie gemalt hat. Enden in rosarotem Rauschen und der paranormalen Botschaft: Love never ends.
—Bad Alchemy, DE
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Pinkcourtesyphone, projet du Californien Richard Chartier, c’est une quinzaine de longs formats ambient en 12 ans, dont une demi-douzaine sur le label expérimental australien Room40 de Lawrence English (qui une fois de plus mastérise), avec une récurrence de morceaux hors-format flirtant avec les 20 minutes (cf. ici within moments / when static alludes to apprehension) et ces artworks signés par l’Américain lui-même dont l’illusion de romantisme et de légèreté des nuances de rose est immédiatement déjouée par un univers musical beaucoup plus clair-obscur et tourmenté qu’il n’y paraît. Ainsi, cette fois encore, les rêveries minimalistes de l’auteur d’Indelicate Slices n’hésitent pas à lorgner à intervalles réguliers sur une lo-fi caverneuse aux field recordings suintants, d’emblée d’ailleurs sur le long titre susmentionné aux 17 minutes subtilement évolutives, qui se fait ouvertement inquiétant lorsque apparaissent, plus ou moins noyées dans le background, d’étranges voix spectrales puis des nappes de synthés aux radiations presque dystopiques.
Pour ce qui est de la suite, entre marées dronesques (foregone inconclusion) et monolithes hantologiques aux crescendos quasi imperceptibles (a stunning blandness), l’album semble d’abord persister dans son humeur de brouillard crépusculaire avant que les motifs mélodiques de notes on vacuuming, bien que malmenés de façon sous-jacente par des basses fréquences et samples hantés, ne laissent entrer un soupçon de lumière, pas forcément rassurante pour autant dans cette atmosphère Twin-Peaksienne à la Badalamenti. Un morceau qui renoue dans ses dernières minutes avec une opacité toute fantomatique, magnifiée ensuite par le dark ambient aux grondements menaçants du vertigineux pre-sumptuous / post-sumptuous aux contrastes nettement plus marqués, sommet d’un disque décidément insaisissable qui finira par dérouler en 2 titres dans les limbes du subconscient, sur 26 minutes hypnotiques et mouvantes à souhait.
—indierockmag.com
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I’m always a bit confused when Richard Chartier mentions that his output as Pinkcourtesyphone is ‘more musical’ than that under his own name. Because that implies that the music he puts out as Richard Chartier is less musical? I don’t think so!
But the difference is in the music itself. From the first notes of the (70-second) intro track The Pinkish Gate, it is clear that this music is more playful, and more cinematic, putting itself in perspective without becoming cheesy. You may prefer one above the other, but both complement each other, showing two sides of the same fascinating personality.
Arise In Sinking Feelings is about ‘soft lights … cool evening breezes, toxic fumes, burnt champagne [?] and supper for one… love and longing…disenchantment… […] a fanciful flight of neurosis’. And with some remarkable self-mockery, Chartier continues: ‘No one who is anyone has heard it and even they were met with incomprehension. “A Stunning Blandness!” read the headlines.’
But don’t make the mistake of taking this music any less seriously after reading these words. This is a serious sonic trip that may conjure many different emotions. The sound design is incredibly deep and the found sound fragments feel as if they are taken from the back of your forgotten dreams.
—ambientblog.net
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the interested and dedicated listener finds him- or herself surrounded by and embbeded in a large scale collage of Ambient- x Deep Listening Music-leaning electronic textures, bits of Field Recordings and fragmented, yet only occasional vocal samples over the course of eight brand new compositions, wildly varying in duration from a little more than a minute to exceeding the ten minutes mark by a big stretch – or two, with especially pieces like “Foregone Inconclusion” sticking out due its glacial, yet glistening waves of shimmering hopefulness whilst cuts like “A Stunning Blandness” bring forth a notion of all embracing and ever so comforting atmospheric dronings and “Gesturing At A Thing Until It’s Gone” might not only provide a cheeky take on wizardry namewise put also presents an amalgamation of outerworldy, scintillating beauty, minimalist atmospheric crackles and an intro sequence reminiscing of slowly decaying, slightly off-harmonic tape loop structures as well as earth shaking low end pulses towards its end, all falling together in an enthralling and truly time dissolving manner which makes this one our personal favorite on this longplayer just to name a few. Go check.
—nitestylez.de
