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WZRDRYAV

West Coast Systems

West Coast Systems is a reference to early days of granular synthesis that was going on in Western Canada in the 80’s. It is dedicated to Barry Truax, who was a key figure in the development of granular synthesis as well as a pioneer in the electroacoustic music community. I had the pleasure and good fortune to work with Barry at Simon Fraser University in the early 2000’s and it permanently changed the way I listened to and manipulated sound.

The sonic character of the album reflects when and where it was made…during the dark rainy season in the southwest corner of Canada.

deep languid sonic spaces…

Bandcamp Apple Music TIDAL Reviews
Catalog:
LINE_116
Format:
digital
Edition:
open edition
Release:
December 2020
Tracklist:

1. Heavy Clouds (05:59)
2. Elysian Chorus (08:43)
3. Walking Away (05:28)
4. Museu (05:41)
5. Nuns Island (07:38)
6. Ocean Falls (03:58)
7. Mystified (04:50)
8. Roberts Creek (05:22)

Produced & Mixed By Kelly Claude Nairn
Mastered by Greg Mindorff at Suite Sound Labs, Vancouver BC
Cover art: Kelly Claude Nairn

As a child of the 1980s, Vancouver-born producer Kelly Claude Nairn (WzrdryAV) was hypnotized by the results of New York City resourcefulness: raw, sparse, drum machine hip-hop and later, the eclectic sample-based rap of the 1990s. Raised by a new age mom and jazz freak artist dad, pillaging the family record cabinet for inspiration was a natural progression. Two turntables, mixer, and a sampler later, Kelly was soon making deft left-field instrumentals. Concurrent w/ electro-acoustic study under granular synthesis pioneer Barry Truax at Simon Fraser University, field recordings, audio collage, sound object manipulation, and slightly unhinged ambient works were added to his expanding cache. Foundation and technique in place, by the new millennium, the beat maker was putting a revelatory breakthrough into practice, “sample anything.” From big screen cinema and late night VHS sessions to TV sign off music and nature sounds, nothing was off limits. This not only led to the creation of WZRDRY (Kelly’s imprint and artistic umbrella), but a range of productions released internationally on vinyl, cassette tape, and compact disc.

Today, Kelly combines his academic background w/ a personal self-taught approach, equally informed by British Columbia’s street meets tree topped mountains and oceanic reflections. Utilizing analog and digital equipment, new tracks aim to create a place/atmosphere/mood via magnetic programming and universal rhythms. While deliberate melodies are uncommon, repeating fragments of tones/chords and foggy loops/drones manifest themselves in the most unexpected ways. “I’m putting together and playing back sounds for the audience that I find evocative for my own escapism,” states the producer, encouraging listeners to join the trip and interpret, as they will. The music of WzrdryAV goes beyond the increasingly fast-paced cultural landscape, gradually slowing the pace and returning some long forgotten feeling to auditory expression. Touching on the influence of Jamaican dub and Detroit techno in his oeuvre, “It’s about facing limitations by looking within to work in different ways and develop one’s creativity.”

wzrdryrecordings.bandcamp.com

REVIEWS OF
West Coast Systems

  • Most of the stuff coming from the drive of Vancounver-born producer Kelly Claude Nairn under the umbrella of his imprint and artistic identity WZRDRY orbits around electronic dub and ‘sample-a-delic’ planets as well as the plenteous stream of drum-machine driven (in the 80ies) and sample-based (in the 90ies) New York hip hop artefacts as well as by the sensory stimuli coming from his parents (a new age mom and a jazz freak artist dad, according to his biography). By the way there are some awesome samples of fluffy ambient stuff, thriving in many releases he dropped through his Bandcamp. This digital release he dropped last December on Richard Chartier well-managed imprint LINE sounds like the apical rarefaction of this area of his sonic explorations, maybe influenced by the quietest aural environment of Vancouver surroundings. The meeting during his electro acoustic studies with granular synthesis forerunner Barry Truax, whose work explicitly influenced the sound of “West Coast Systems” (a dedication to Mr Truax but also to the place where these sounds were forged), the tree topped mountains and the closeness to the ocean of his nest in British Columbia as well as the placid flows of the streets of Vancouver are somehow mirrored in this entrancing flow of overstretched whispering tones, agglutinated into field recordings, vaporous aural entities and gently delayed gauzy patterns. Environment variables (to call them so) or specific spots often become the sparkle of each suite, such as a prolonged downpour on the opening “Heavy Clouds”, where a wave-like game on the volume renders a sort of interpenetration between a meteorological phenomenon and the perennial movement of the sea, the almost hypnotic flow of “Elysian Chorus” or the entrancing sonic heterotopia of tracks like “Nuns Island” or “Roberts Creek”.
    —chaindlk.com

  • BEST OF 2020:
    As I’ve mentioned previously, 2020 was overrun with ambient options – a situation which makes it all the more impressive when something truly stands out. Perhaps it’s the sense of commitment in each piece, or the small dissonances and digital synths that suggest a feeling of elevation, but West Coast Systems truly brings something new to the by-now established game of granular synthesis workouts.
    — Create Digital Media / cdm.link

  • My love for the Vancouver-based Transmolecular Compendium (not sure if they still use that name actually!) knows no bounds. My introduction to this incredible group of artists started with the inimitable SEEKERSINTERNATIONAL, but wzrdryAV was right in the thick of things shortly thereafter. Kelly Nairn’s music as wzrdryAV flies a different path than SKRS, but I’ve always seen them as excellent complements to each other. With West Coast Systems, his ambient synthesis reaches a new level, floating in a cloud-like zone of unconscious perception.

    Hiss-laden compositions with ghost melodies that barely exist, flickering in the distance like a streetlight with faulty wiring. Nairn masterfully crafts soundscapes with a physical aspect to them; it’s music I can feel gently flowing over my skin like a soft, loving caress. “Nuns Island” is a familiar spectre you know is there, but can’t quite touch, leaving cold drafts in unexpected places. Everything is at arms-length, frustratingly out-of-reach while simultaneously offering comfort with its familiarity. When “Elysian Chorus” glides through dense fog zones with droning, extended melodies that only reveal their existence after extended meditation. Any melodic elements are accidental, a happy byproduct of loops and samples stretched beyond their breaking point.

    Barry Truax (who’s brilliant Sequence of Earlier Heaven is a long-time favorite) is mentioned as a reference point and it makes sense. West Coast Systems concocts fresh new avenues for exploring the mix of synthesis and field recording (and sampling in wzrdryAV’s case). With a name like West Coast Systems, immediate images of sun kissed beaches and heavy bass come to mind, but it’s Nairn spins it the other direction. Pebble beaches and Pacific Northwest grey skies are his canvas where ambient solace rises into the mist. Welcome to the grey zone.
    —foxydigitalis.substack.com

  • Vancouver’s Kelly Claude Nairn makes ambient dub that feels like a gentle rainbath, yet whisks you away somewhere else when you aren’t paying attention. A longtime close collaborator with the warped dub crew Seekers International, he released two tapes on Digitalis Limited before they fell off the face of the earth, and his latest album is on Richard Chartier’s drone/microsound label Line. More than anything else, this is just incredibly soothing music, but it’s far from paint-by-numbers ambient. The textures are constantly shifting far off the grid, and there’s always unexpected tweaks, rifts, and drops. It’s super refreshing if you just lay back and immerse yourself in it, but deep listening will reveal just how strange it is, almost restlessly so. And it really does benefit if you turn it up loud rather than let it dribble away at low volume in the background. It just comes at you like waves in multiple directions. In the right performance space this would be astonishing live, but for now we’ll just have to settle with blasting this out towards the sun.
    —theanswerisinthebeat.net