William Tyler - "Flight Final"

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Over the course of his career, William Tyler has evolved from a skilled journeyman to a center-stage auteur in his own right. The guitar might be his native tongue as an instrumentalist, but to call him a guitarist at this point feels woefully insufficient; there’s a restless sweep to his music that resists boundaries, like a rambling road trip with no chosen destination.

Tyler always conjures a vivid sense of place, but compositions like his new recording “Flight Final” are as much experiences in time, unmooring the listener from their present surroundings until you’re adrift in a sea of pure sound. He's increasingly turned not just to field recordings repurposed into new shapes, but to found objects transformed intro instruments: "Flight Final" was recorded with an iPhone and a tape machine scavenged from the home of his late grandfather, rendering sounds as impressionistic textures.

Voices on the distant horizon fade in and out, as if some divine hand is surfing on the radio dial of eternity, searching for the wavelength of a lost civilization. Amidst the crackle of broadcast signals, there’s a peaceful clarity, with pulsating waves and a gentle sonar ping that steers us like a homing beacon. The hazy recitation of numbers suggests a countdown, but there's no launch, as we float further away from the division of the horizon line, a satellite drifting from its charted course.

More than a lead instrument, Tyler wields his guitar like a guiding compass, suggesting the currents of his music rather than firmly dictating its direction. The ever-so-sparse finger strokes on “Flight Final” pierce a cloud of murky static, like beams of light that burst into oblivion as quickly as they are seen. The acoustic intimacy of his earlier work might be traded for electronics and distortion here, but the language hasn’t changed; Tyler’s sound designs are still imbued with a healing radiance that restores your mind to equilibrium.