The Rain, The Pour is the impromptu and immense new three track EP by Joplin, Missouri experimental artist and multi-instrumentalist Whettman Chelmets. Beginning in early April as a session to unwind in response to the tense blur of being locked down, beset by worries and helpless. by the end of the month Chelmets had organically transformed a set of half formed ideas into three shining long form examples of hope that would serve to lift the surrounding gloom.
Between the EP’s longer bookends, middle track ‘My Presence Will Go With You’ blends a slightly optimistic chord progression with an uncertain atmosphere of static, hiss and distortion. Closer ‘My Hiding Place’, while crushingly ghoulish at times is balanced by an evolving circular tonality that envelops the sense of foreboding uncertainty and replaces it with enlightenment and profundity. That same blend of oppositional forces comes into focus even more sharply on tense yet cathartic opener ‘Surround Me With Songs of Deliverance’. With its unlikely deployment of rhythm and canny use of stretch software to reconcile a set of disparate musical styles, it’s also the EP’s most impressive offering.
Steady back in the mix hats provides a pulsating techno driven backdrop to unerring low end drone as snippets of shoegaze and noise inspired fuzz and feedback are stretched and looped to form a dramatic and deceptively mournful post rock like atmosphere. When blended together however the trepidation slowly dissipates leaving one soaked in an ambience both resplendent and radiant in its positivity. Listen below and buy the self released The Rain, The Pour here.