Continuing on with the experimental tangent outlined in the previous Track Of The Day entry with Gina X‘s “Bb 50”, here is a track that pops up often enough for me as it’s on a number of playlists I let loose through the speakers while working, and an album I play here and there to get into the “focus zone” when there’s a long list of things to do. It’s a glassy, chiming piece that evokes a feeling of calm in the eye of storm.
Michele Musser — also working under her actual name, Michele Mercure — released a number of albums of experimental and exploratory synthesizer landscapes in the 1980s. Originally getting into composition by way of writing music for local theatre productions in her home town of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (USA), starting with an avant garde score for a local production of Waiting For Godot, she apparently also did audio composition work for the new and fledgling MTV channel, creating short pieces of music for their idents and logo that would air on the channel.
Like a lot of underground, electronic artists in this style at the time, they often worked on their own in a time when there was far less networking between like-minded artists and only many years later would have fans, listeners and journalists be able to more “connect the dots” between any group of artists working in the same style that would dictate any sort similarity or genre that links these artists together. Mercure herself however did discover an underground cassette culture of similar musicians that inspired her to self-release a number of her recordings from this time under the Michele Musser and then the Michele Mercure name, and even at one point corresponding with the well-known German electronic musician Conrad Schnitzler.
If anything, especially over the past number of years, many recordings of these more experimental DIY electronic musicians from this time have been re-surfacing through users posting archives of music on YouTube, or even newer record labels re-releasing albums by these musicians in a full, deluxe album package, bringing them to new and likely younger artists interested in music in that style that may have never come across the music before.
Mercure/Musser‘s music contained a lot of variation — all recorded in her home studio — from darker synth dirges to dreamier atmospheric pieces to compositions that fit almost into a musique concrète vibe, sometimes just consisting of her own voice through a sampler, such as the title track from this release called “Eyechant”.
Later material would see her including more “traditional” guitar, bass and drums with more world music influences being referenced in her work. Over the years she had collaborated with other artists and musicians, including a film production company she ran with her partner Mary Haverstick, and releasing recordings here and there in the years to pass.
I’m probably not giving the most accurate picture of this underground artist as I’ve only recently discovered her background myself, despite having some of her recordings for many years, but below is a great insight to the artist with a piece run by BandCamp Daily (see link further down) back in 2018, when a number of her recordings were released by the NYC-based experimental music label RVNG Intl., run by Matt Werth, formerly of the 2000s American experimental psychedelic, indie group Aspera, whom oddly enough I have their first LP Sugar & Feathered (the link here using newer artwork that differs from the original pressing) from 2001 that I purchased around the time it was released, which probably warrants a re-listen after all of these years.
I think I probably discovered Aspera through various underground music websites at the time, as well as by the band member’s various activities in the 1990s, including Werth’s 90s “emotional hardcore” band William Martyr 17, who put out a smattering of releases on labels I was following at the time, like Bloodlink and File 13 — the latter releasing a number 7″s by bands I gave a lot of listen to as a young, angry teenager.
