“Else” was recorded by HEY EXIT, in Brooklyn NY in 2015, but you’d never really be able to tell as it comes off as this sort of timeless drone recording. “Else” starts with a low, slow, cloudy drone and slowly builds and destroys subtlety across the entire album. The first sounds that emerge are delicate. spacious, tone poems of humming synths? guitars? who knows? but the source 
isn’t really that important and the sounds create a sonic space that exists somewhat outside of codified instrumentation, structure, rhythm. The sonic palette of HEY EXIT is largely of a similar toolset, at least on Else, and the cassette is broken up into five tracks, however they all function as one breadth, decaying and gently bleeding into each other. “What Role, If Any” is probably the track that feels most complete on its own in terms of a moving composition within itself and offers arguably the most sonic density and variety on this EP.
The sounds themselves are a plush mesh of drones, blissed out and stretched out orchestral swells, slow attack guitar swells, strategically placed crunches of rumbling distortion, and wind. The tempo of Else is made up of slow, delicately offered pulses, as if someone was breathing out the notes, blowing ou
t the tempo on a single flickering candle, but not through a wind instrument, the attack is gone, the breath has transformed into a slow, churning, crawling, beautiful sound. The slow, crawling , glossy pillars of sounds , at times almost seemed to sync up with my breath as i was sitting in the dark listen
ing to the cassette on repeat. This is excellent “meditation” music, or at least music that begs of slow action, slow thought, slow body movements, and slow listening. There are moments that get “noisy” in the traditional sense, but they never obliterate or destroy the more quiet, subtle tones that dance and breathe as he main life source of the piece. “Else” is a delicately crafted ambient drone offering for fans of slow, delicate, breathing music to listen to on a foggy, crawling confusing day. Highly enjoyable.
You can check this release and more from HEY EXIT, here
D E C A Y C A S T Magazine 