Mike Vernusky

It starts with rasping akin to a locust with asthma and slowly unwinds through metallic drones and sub-woofer rumbles to in-out, breath-like, dense galactic noise, and that's just the first track. Austin, TX-based guitarist/electroacoustician Vernusky shapes sounds, voices and acousmatic gestures with sculptor-like finesse. With such as like "Thou," "Hidden" and "Missing," what he doesn't do is make programmed music that paints unambiguous pictures. Instead, emotions and scenes are obliquely hinted at, allowing the listener's imagination associative latitude. On "Under," an imaginary elevator ride takes on vaguely ominous overtones, with eerie, reverb-drenched, long tones and distant, thundering pulses. "Hidden" begins with undersea atmospherics and ends up in an unplaced engine room ― a non-linear dreamscape. "Dallas" is a courtroom scene recollecting security officers' recollections of the Kennedy motorcade leading up to the events at the grassy knoll and a strange parallel event in a hallucinated diner that mirrors his testimony; it's an affecting track that unfolds like a weird radio play. Vernusky's work reminds us that sound can generate intriguing movies in the mind.