Mineralism
ISSUE #236
The scientists here at Earwyrms are always digging for new sonic gold, and well folks, today we struck an enormous vein. There’s an emergent genre down here that just might get us filthy rich if we take it to the ambient market.
Its name is mineralism, or mineral ambient, in homage to the West Mineral Ltd. label from which most of it comes. The grandfather of mineralism is Huerco S., whose 2016 album For Those of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have) is its seminal text, full of swirling, looping, lurching textures.
This newsletter, I’ll admit, has gotten so ambient over the years as to almost be New Coke, but unfortunately that’s the path curiosity pulls me down. To my younger self’s surprise, I’ve developed a wide taste for experimental sound—the difference between Eraserhead at 16 and 30—and nothing has quite screamed “alien soundscape” quite as softly as mineralism (except maybe Oneohtrix Point Never, but those realms are digital).
Huerco S. is Brian Leeds, an electronic musician from Kansas who also writes under the alias Pendant, both of which release albums under the aforementioned label, which he founded. Other non-Leeds mineralist artists include Ulla, Perila, Exael, uon, Ben Bondy, and more. From the label’s website:
“West Mineral Ltd. is an Audio-Mineral exploration company committed to furthering the research & sustainable development of Audio-Mineral product distribution, mining, & refinement. Operating globally since 2017.
Un-leased audio-minerals are untapped wealth. To determine the potential of un-leased audio-minerals, we will excavate & refine the product to increase your continued satisfaction & usage.”
The difference between mineralism and other ambient music can best be explained by evoking the subtle difference in flavor between mineral water and standard water. It’s all very ambiguous. Let me explain.
Mineralism is the sound of geology on strange planets—compact, firm, natural. It’s not air and it’s not water, despite the earlier simile. This is the breath of enormous caverns, convergent tectonic plates, the squeezing of our Earth by gravity over time. It’s strange and aeonian and paradoxically gentle, the way cool rock can feel like the softest pillow or the smell of soil sometimes rivals the sweetest flower.
Got it? Now dig in.
There are now roving bands of sonic scavengers in the fractured data gutters of the post–Web 2.0 internet, musicians often known by little more than alt-code symbols (♡u∫agi幻覚∀∁ⓛᙌ✬) or keyboard vomit (Sophiaaaahjkl;8901). These boundary pushers are chopping and screwing so hard it sounds like a chainsaw, their samples reduced to little more by the end than glitter and stardust.