Non Resurgam by Henry Flower (Review)

According to the notes for Henry Flower’s Non Resurgam, the EP’s four songs were created by improvising guitar lines through various effects boxes, then processing them with sine waves and found sounds. Which might lead one to believe the songs are cold, academic, avant-garde pieces. But that couldn’t really be further from the truth.

Sure, you hear those sine waves and found sounds, but they’re not really the primary focus here. Rather, they exist more in the background, coloring the pieces and filling in the spaces between Flower’s delicate, crystalline guitar meanderings — which prove quite evocative at times.

The title track emanates forth a cascade of echoing, delayed guitars, gentle as a fine spring rain or sunlight filtering through the trees to dapple the ground beneath. “Dreaming of Oxygen” is a bit darker and more sparse, with soft guitar strums trailing behind like contrails against a vast sky of deep background pulses and oscillations. The EP closes with “Secret History,” another understated guitar-centric piece that seems custom made for soft, breathy female vocals à la Ivy’s Dominique Durand.