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| Image by Ted Barron |
Today composer and sound artist Ross Goldstein has released the final vignette in his mellotron series, Chutes & Ladders. The album follows 2018's The Eighth House and 2020's Timoka as a set of blossoming apertures that part to reveal the many silvery pearls that wait to reward an artist willing to apply proper quotient of pressure and patience to this legendarily temperamental device. The sounds of the mellotron are historically have provided a certain sonic accent and transcendent aura to rock and orchestral scores, but very rarely act as the vessel for an artist's compositions alone. Ross, being who he is, sees potential in places that others begrudge as fallow soil. He, therefore, took it upon himself to plant seeds of inspiration in the crystalline loams and milky pools of steady motion that sustain the peat of the mellotron's kaleidoscopic cataract to see what it could yield. The results, verily, speak for themselves. I find myself confounded by much of what I hear on Chutes & Ladders, even when the reference points wring out clear as day. To aid in with my understanding Ross's work, I reached out to the man himself for comment and clarity. You can read his response below, and I think you will find that they are suitably in line with the aesthetics of his album; brief, opaque, and disarmingly honest.
Interview was conducted over email on October 19.
What was it that attracted you to the mellotron and fascinated you enough to plan a trilogy of albums around it?
