Windy & Carl and Heavy Winged. Monolith: Earth.

The original vinyl version of this was a lovely, single-sided picture disc with both tracks mixed together, but hard panned to the left and right channels. By adjusting the balance, you could control how much drone you heard in relation to your rock (sort of like Boris' Dronevil, or the Velvet Underground's Murder Mystery). The groove on the vinyl also spiralled out from the center of the record, which was a little confusing at first, since it didn't come with instructions.

Windy & Carl have melted into pure, gorgeous drone that barely shifts or stirs but still manages to entrance and immerse (the CD version, which I'm making available here, has an extended mix of this). Heavy Winged lay down an epic free-rock guitar jam bolstered by primitive, gargantuan drumming. It's surprising how well these tracks work, whether together or alone.

Part one has both of the individual tracks. Part two is the hard-panned stereo mix.

Part 1
Part 2

Windy & Carl official website
Windy & Carl on myspace

Heavy Winged on myspace

Windy & Carl. A Dream of Blue.

As kids speculating on the hidden origins of dust, we reasoned that it must come from great, soft clouds of silver winged moths that descended in the night, like a legion of miniature powdered wigs shivering off the accumulated particles of crystallized sleep that grew on their delicate furry bodies, the sediment gradually coating our daytime world in soft-focus nostalgia.

Blue

Windy & Carl's official site

Windy & Carl on myspace

Windy & Carl / Landing. Split EP.

I've probably spent more time listening to Windy & Carl than any other band I know. For the last five or six years, each night as I go to sleep, one of their albums has been playing on the little portable stereo by my bed. Consciousness had spun at least a hundred times before I ever heard it all the way through to the end. These days, it's Songs for the Broken Hearted. This isn't to say that their music is boring or sleep-inducing; merely...vast. Unimaginably so, like the way an electron cloud, dust swirling in sunlight, and a galaxy of stars all look the same when viewed from the right perspectives. If Bach explored the music of the spheres, Windy & Carl have set music to brownian motion.

I remember sleeping over at my grandmother's house as a child, and again later as a teenager when my family lost our house and she invited us to move in with her. It was the house my mother grew up in. Now, my sister lives there, raising her own daughter. My room (now my neice's) was right next to the hulking central-air-conditioning unit, hidden in the hall closet. At the end of the hall was my grandmother's bedroom. Teenagers and the elderly tend to nap a lot during the day and stay up late at night, so we were usually on the same schedule. She spent her evenings knitting and watching TV, and I lay in bed reading and listening to old Pink Floyd records. Hours after everyone else had fallen asleep, she would shuffle by and knock lightly on my door to say goodnight. I'd turn off my lamp and hear her adjust the thermostat in the dark. A minute later, with a distant whir and a white-noise hush, cool air would flood the room. Even under a blanket you could feel the air pressure change, and my door would click as it was pushed shut and the brass latch bounced off the catchplate. To this day, the sound of that air conditioner is my favorite noise in all the world.

When my grandmother died, Windy & Carl, Landing, and some of Brian Eno's ambient works were about all I could listen to. Their hovering thrum took me right back to that bedroom, where I lay in the dark, listening to my home breathe, knowing that she'd just said goodnight.

Split

Windy & Carl's official site
Windy & Carl on myspace

Landing's official site
Landing on myspace