Corntuth – The Desert Is Paper Thin
Last week, ambient musician Corntuth released their record The Desert Is Paper Thin, a concept record soundtracking a long desert drive throughout the course of an entire day, from sunrise to late evening. Corntuth recorded it during the pandemic as a means of escapism, and summoned industry veteran Pete Finney to add lush pedal steel to the emotive and organic-sounding record.
The video was filmed in Landers, Calif. The idea was to make an ambient film, with the hope that people would put it on their computer screens and play it while they worked so they might feel like they were where the music is set. I treated it a few ways to give it a VHS look, with the idea being that a VHS treatment on natural footage would capture some of the melding of 1983 synthesizer + acoustic/pedal steel instrumentation on the record. I meant the title of the record to suggest a couple things, but one of them is a sense of fragility, like if the desert is paper thin, you might fall through it. The loose concept of the LP is that it tracks one person’s drive alone across a desert over the course of one day. I was thinking about the lore of people who leave a past self behind to light out for desert territories, and reading Desert Oracle & Thomas Merton, and watching Paris, Texas and old Wile E. Coyote & roadrunner cartoons a lot. I think there’s something to just looking at a stationary shot of that landscape from afar and feeling some kind of impenetrable mystery. It feels, to me, like an invitation and a threat at the same time, and if anyone thinks about the story of the ‘main character’ in the LP, I was hoping there’d be an implicit feeling of tension between a sense of running towards something, and the risk of running from something. Probably none of that comes through though, but it was helpful for me to think about in making it.
To add to the concept of the fragility of the desert, this video really points out how much Landers has been developed in recent years, bringing to mind the fact that developers are simply adding fines for removing protected native plants (like, um, the Joshua Tree) into their budgets, the fact that climate change is reducing the number of native plants, the fact that no rain at all this year meant no flowers and therefore no seed pods, disrupting a generative cycle… I digress. The desert is fragile and in danger. You can learn more about desert stewardship and donate to Mojave Desert Land Trust here.
Corntuth’s new album is a beautiful, deeply meditative song cycle that, emanating a day in the desert, is a perfect soundtrack for early morning coffee sipping, late afternoon creativity, sunset dips in the pool, and evening strolls as the stars come into view and the planets align.
“Side C” (the tracks are untitled aside from a letter and number assignation, Corntuth’s previous work holds A and B) is shimmering, synthetic tones hovering like gossamer orbs or mirages rippling on the road ahead. C-004 is a desert rainstorm breaking open, chimes twinkling, before C-005 launches into acoustic guitar strums augmented by glistening strobes of synth. “Side D” gets more ghostly as it progresses, shadowy shapes looming as night falls in the desert and colors quickly change until falling into darkness.
Although the desert may fall to dedesertification at some point (or more likely in the long run, evolve and change into a harsher but still incandescently beautiful and unalterable landscape), records – and videos- like this one can capture a moment in time and transport the listener to that time and place.
Get The Desert Is Paper Thin on Bandcamp!
