Bleep

Chicago sound artist Michael Vallera has notched up two releases for the great Opal Tapes under his COIN alias since 2013 already, but here he returns to the label under his birth name for a collection of drone tracks and ambient audio vistas. One of the most surprising things about Distance is that, for the most part, these tracks were composed using just an electric guitar and a drum machine. The variety and depth of sound that Vallera brings out of these instruments is huge: just listen to a track like ‘Grace of Climate’, which begins as a foreboding, dystopic dronescape before the clouds part to reveal hopeful bursts of light.