At times mysterious, at times complex, but always relaxing, even during its climaxing moments, . Silent Land Time Machine is an instrumental rock project that reminds me a lot of A Silver Mt Zion. Except that… Jon is just one man… But upon your first listen you wouldn’t know it… Hailing out of Austin, Texas, Jon is a multi-instrumentalist, and is equally comfortable behind the guitar, piano, accordion, and a wide range of stringed instruments. His motivation to master the musical medium and inspirations are credited to Anni Rossi (recently signed to 4AD) and Sophie Trudeau (member of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and a co-founder of Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band), as well as much other output from Constellation and FatCat labels. Jon mangles instrumentals, DSP filtering, and field recordings which create a feeling of a small folksy community gathering, improvising over familiar melodies.
The mood of &hope still, is less apocalyptic and political then the above mentioned influences, leaving a lot more room for imagination of the listener. Although some of the sounds appear to be looped, the patterns are not obsessively repetitive and are very organic. Jon takes great care in overdubbing layers and layers of live instrumentation to create his unique blend of post-americana-psyminimal-desktop-folktronica. Yes. I like that for a genre. The debut album has been released this past October, 2008, as a collaborative effort between Time-Lag Records and Jon’s very own Indian Queen Records. Recommended if you like experimental pieces from M83, Mogwai, Benoît Pioulard, and Múm.
