City Paper Review

Michael McDermott and Tim Motzer have made some pretty noisy shit. For the former, there's Gemini Wolf, Sleepers, Awake! and Robots in Disguise. And the latter? Ursula Rucker and King Britt's Sister Gertrude Morgan CD—not to mention contributions to David Sylvian's Nine Horses and Jaki Liebezeit's Secret Rhythms. Yet, on new solo excursions, each Philadelphian finds solace in silence.

Tissue Paper Ghosts finds composer/producer/laptopper McDermott stepping into his role as solo sonic seducer for a meditative drone-scape adventure based around the psychic remains of a car crash. Though slowly enveloping melodies make the softly clanging "Untitled Love" and the blip-filled "Arms Bent" gorgeous and sedative, woeful winds and menacing crickets aren't far behind, infiltrating unsettled tracks like "Slow Bleeding" and the swooshy, buzzy "Happy Birthday, Goodbye." Overall though, the tender TPG—much in league with say, the instrumental side of Bowie's Heroes—is a cleverly quiet joy that doesn't let you rest in peace.

Tilomo, Tim Motzer's guitar/laptop solo project, benefits greatly from the sloe-gin-y liquid soul of his work with Britt—you can hear it in the way his fuzzy jazz-foink chords ooze through the title track. But there's a sputter, beep, whoosh and clink to the proceedings that make it happily irksome and decidedly un-neo-soulful. The sawed, strained string samples of "Blue Samari," the thickly blown wind sounds that trace the development of "Embrace" from autumn chill to winter storm, the cheery tinkling of "Chi Moto"—there are eight million moody stories to be told in this ambient jungle.

--A.D. Amorosi