08/15/2025
Announcing Bumpy No. 32: A collaborative album of new works by the Twin Cities-based improvisational ambient duo astrid hubbard flynn & aros e-v, titled “all aflutter / soft gnaw”
Check it out here: https://astridhubbardflynnarose-v.bandcamp.com/album/all-aflutter-soft-gnaw
“all aflutter / soft gnaw” is out Friday 9/5 on Bandcamp, select streaming platforms, and as a limited run of cassette tapes. Head over to our Bandcamp via the link above to pre-order the cassette as well as take a listen to an excerpt of the track “all aflutter”. There will be a Bandcamp Listening Party on 9/8, followed by an in-person release show at MirrorLab in Minneapolis, MN on 9/10 with support from Rice and Purity Basket! Please enjoy the gorgeous album art by SEER, release show poster by astrid hubbard flynn, and read a bit of writing about the album by Lou Shemroske below!
"'all aflutter' and 'soft gnaw' were performed live at Resource– a hardwood, multimedia venue with no stage– but this performance could be happening anywhere. The absence of a clear space in which the songs are emanating from is part of the point. And this illusion of placement and material is where co-creators astrid hubbard flynn and Ryan Ander-Evans, AKA Aros E-V, work best. Having worked with the experimental music collective Zeitgeist, hubbard flynn approaches music as something collaborative and complex rather than conventionally beautiful. Following this logic, the main instrument of choice on the album being a prepared box fan only makes sense. It is also likely a byproduct of the monthly co-facilitations hubbard flynn hosts, helping people make their own instruments. Ryan Ander-Evans, with a background in field recordings, archiving, and using aging music hardware, lends his expertise. With something always clunking around, he brings an aliveness and slow warp to what happens throughout the hour-long duration of the album. hubbard flynn and Ander-Evans are perfect collaborators in their dedication to invention.
'all aflutter', the first of the two songs, best captures what the duo are most interested in: what is already there, lying around and waiting to be made into sound; mundanity folded into something larger. The carefully controlled spinning of the fan is an organism in the larger ecosystem created by hubbard flynn’s soprano cooing, and Ander-Evans' modular synthesizer. There’s the rattling like that of a can of spray paint, coughing, maybe a floor being tidied up. A consistent hum, not like a melody but like a dryer. All carefully orchestrated. The tone shift of the song takes time, but once it happens there’s no going back. Right when you’ve relaxed into the piece, the song becomes ominous, almost haunted. hubbard flynn and Ander-Evans have plucked us out of the first invented environment and dropped us into a startling elsewhere.
'soft gnaw' begins in a grating, perfect loop. There’s what sounds like a pop can opening with that commercial, carbonated hiss, the sounds of a mouth like a child’s taunting raspberry, all as if heard from the apartment below, or from outside the window. But try as you might to hear distinguishable, familiar sounds, it’s impossible to know what’s happening live and what’s a result of the delay. It’s a woozy, muggy, delirious element of the album. The more it comes into focus, the more it falters. What seemed clear earlier is suddenly gone and you didn’t notice it until just now. It’s a wonderful and demented trick. hubbard flynn and Ander-Evans channel the circle of life. What dies leaves behind a co**se that feeds the newest iteration of birth. The fan still circulates, the heartbeat of the music. You, the listener, are now part of the thrum. There will come a time (about 30 minutes from now) when you will be released. You will blink your eyes at the sunlight and hear the birds– pre-recorded or live– chirp, happy to have relinquished yourself to the timeline of hubbard flynn and Ander-Evans’ making."
