In 2010 Partial (Noe Cuellar and Joseph Clayton Mills) were asked to participate in an exhibition of site specific installations and performances at Pilsen Vintage and Thrift, a second-hand store in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. They responded by using the items found in the basement of the store to compose a piece of music, "H", which was performed at the store. Further investigations with the materials found there resulted in the recordings found on this disc. They are a far cry from my local thrift store, which is usually blanketed with a thick layer of loud pop music.

"Marcel" uses the thrift store objects in conjunction with other instruments and processes, moving from rich drone and rasp (shades of Cuellar's other band, Coppice) to sounds of plastic, metal and wood being manipulated in (somewhat) real time. The contrast between the acoustic sounds and the more electronic/processed work is never so great as to be jarring, everything blends together as textures are conjured and layered and played out. Things change fairly quickly throughout, but the piece has a rather relaxed feel. Somewhat like browsing through a thrift store.

"Paul" is a shorter piece assembled from recordings made while the pair were preparing for their performance. As such it's sparser than the first piece, with less processing after the fact. Lots of friction happening here, with what sounds like many wooden surfaces being rubbed, scraped or buffed. Lots of space too, giving the sonic episodes time to decay in memory, before the whole thickens up toward the end with some knocking a-rhythm.

The final short piece, "a Single screw of Flesh is all that pins the Soul", is an unaltered recording of a Swiss music box constructed in 1890. A nice little coda to a very interesting disc.