OUT APRIL 25, 2025 on all digital listening platforms
LINE welcomes back Kelly Nairn, aka wzrdryAV, with Wave Resource, his 3rd album for the label. His previous albums West Coast Systems Vol 2 (LINE_127, 2022) and West Coast Systems (LINE_116, 2020) are loved by listeners for their grainy warmth and lushness. The last track is a blended continuous mix version of all of the pieces included on the album.
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In 2013, I bought a cheap Casio HT-700 synthesizer for 50 bucks. It looked more like a generic entry level synth, but to my surprise, it also had analog filters and a decent degree of programmability. With a sole two-digit “screen,” it was quite tedious to program. In the end though, and with the assistance of some outboard effects, I was able to design a variety of sounds to work from and build a substantial library of inspiration that I still use to this day.
After many laborious, experimental sessions, I got to a place where I thought that I’d squeezed everything out of it that I could, and left the machine to rest on a studio shelf. Roughly a decade later, I felt compelled to try recording with the Casio again. I ran the HT-700 through a Phase 90 and began to hear sounds that were really catching my attention. After editing the results, I discovered a three second blip of sound that clearly stood above the rest. I put the file into some processing software dating back to the OS9 era and heard elements I’d been chasing for years. These were the sounds that I had imagined in my mind for a very long time, but couldn’t quite realize.
Wave Resource represents the closest that I’ve ever gotten to hearing my internal world play out of a speaker. The vast majority of the album is that three second sample described above, pushed into as many different directions as I could with the available tools.
As an artist, I’ve been drawn to the idea of humans making “something out of nothing” forever… Themes of survival, resourcefulness, and efficiency are always on my mind. Initially and deeply inspired as a kid in Grade 7 by a hip-hop, cut and paste/sample-based aesthetic, I took notice when I heard artists that were doing so much with relatively basic setups compared to what we have in 2025. Seeing their chosen tools being repurposed beyond their planned utility in clever, previously unimaginable ways, blew my mind. Growing up in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, I watched both sonic and visual creative movements emerge that would have never happened without true ingenuity.
When resources are limited, I believe it to be an opportunity to activate the epicenter of authenticity within and ideally create something that holds up years later.
