Threads

Description

Tim Story’s 1982 debut saga is a true case study in the shifting sands of the nascent progressive music industry. Recording on a Tascam 4-track in his bedroom in Whitehouse, Ohio with a motley assortment of instruments—a found vibraphone, a pawn-shop Les Paul, his mother’s small upright piano, a PAiA synth kit assembled by his girlfriend’s father, and a Yamaha CS-30 synth—Tim dubbed six cassettes and sent them out into the world with the greatest optimism. Following a polite rejection from Klaus Schulze, the French avant-garde label Atem (This Heat, Univers Zero, Art Zoyd) offered to release Threads via their new instrumental electronic subdivision: Labyrinthes. After several letters confirming the terms of the arrangement, along with several rounds of test pressings, correspondence suddenly ceased. A few months later, the label went bankrupt without ever starting. However, at the same time, Schulze’s copy found its way into the hands of an associate engineer who played it for a pair of journalists. Impressed, they connected Tim with the Norwegian label Uniton Records (Popul Vuh, Harold Budd). Having already recorded a follow-up, In Another Country, the more neoclassical-leaning album would then become his inaugural release. Finally, 40 years later, Dais Records corrects history’s error by properly releasing Threads on vinyl for the first time. It is an alluring work, exploratory yet emotional, documenting Tim’s road not taken, like the first chapter of a book that was set aside to begin another. Though only in his early twenties at the time of its creation, Threads feels refined and thoughtful, weaving through a wide array of moods and minimalist melodies. From the solar synth blasts of “Tethered By A Thread” to the shadowy cosmic drift of “Without Waves” and “Iso” to the fragile piano vignettes of “Burst” and “Scene And Artifact.” Tim Story’s compositional instincts are subtle and sophisticated, sculpting shimmering gemstones of fluctuating brilliance. He cites his discovery of looping as a central tool in his creative process, allowing him to generate recurring patterns of echoes and textures. Both a time capsule and a discographical source, Threads vividly captures the sensations of early 1980s electronic music: post-kosmische, pre-new age, before ambient was codified, at a moment when synthesizers began to slip into the underground. It is an album of beginnings and bifurcations, an inner space traveling towards boundless horizons, born of a youthful devotion to something one loves, in a world that feels uncertain.